Herald of the Stars: Chapter One Hundred and One

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After four years of labour, my third eye grows enough to use it and I gain sufficient skill in simulations offered by E-SIM in my eye’s use that I feel confident in navigating. The creepy addition to my physical body goes unnoticed by most as I can’t open it without killing everyone around me. The eye is designed with its lethal effect in mind and I have to exert a similar effort to a frown to actually open it, and keep it open. It’s not something one does by accident unless they are incredibly careless.

I am not fond of the structural weakness it adds to my skull and have modified my black skeleton to shore up the hole in my head as well as incorporate the modifications I created for my small council. Unfortunately though, I can’t use sacred blood and I don’t need the conversion field when there is one built into my newly forged power armour.

Most of the time I wear a helmet so I don’t need to worry about these weaknesses, even so, just to be sure I also install a cybernetic eye-patch over my third eye. I decorate it with the Cog Mechanicus, or Opus Machina, the half metal, half bone skull inside a cog that the mechanicus uses as its symbol. E-SIM controls the eye-patch so unless someone manages to simultaneously hack the ancient data guardian and subvert my will no one will ever get accidentally fried.

I also try removing the mutation on my hands, as I really don’t need the extra joint in my fingers. The mutation persists, however, rebuilding itself without E-SIMs intervention, converting warp energy directly into mass regardless of my will.

Perhaps in time I will fix it, and my troubles make me admire the skill that must have gone into Quaani’s genome that allegedly gives him a chance to select some of his mutations, even if not knowing how to do so is what has caused him so much pain. It isn’t within the navigator conversion module I received and reminds me that the Imperium does, occasionally, make genuine scientific advancements.

A few more years and I will be able to fix Quaani. For now, though, it is with great trepidation that I say my goodbyes, pack up my vessels inside Iron Crane, and submerge myself in the tank of Iron Crane’s warp sextant.

A warp sextant is a replacement for the navigator throne. Not only will the tank sustain me like a throne would, if I actually required such things, but it also mimics the local flows of the warp picked up by the external sensors on the hull. This massively aids in working out where to go and how to get there.

The warp sextant comes with a custom set of cogitators that assist in the calculation of surrounding routes and their stability. I don’t need the assistance as I have my own neural enhancements, but outsourcing the calculations is much more efficient as the specialised cogitators and machine-spirits free up resources for me to work on other tasks.

Sitting in a tank observing a nightmare realm doesn’t erode my administration work or get me any closer to finishing the annoyingly stubborn mark II Marwolv-Pattern lasgun and so my additional labours must continue simultaneously. Additional tasks will still be put on hold for my first few jumps. I really don’t want to mess up.

Technically, I don’t have to dive into the tank right away as it will take over two weeks to reach the Mandeville point but I want to get used to it before we translate to the warp. The tight suit and breathing apparatus are uncomfortable at first. I could ditch the rebreather as the liquid has enough oxygen for me to breathe, even without a bionic respiratory system, but I just don’t like breathing liquid. It is uncomfortable and constantly makes me panic.

Better lungs are one of the upgrades I haven’t got yet as I’ve been relying on my power armour and undersuit when adverse conditions arise. First though, I need to restock on souls after the Emperor nabbed mine for blessing my small council.

I’m still salty about that.

Two point six weeks pass at a crawl and it is entirely my own fault as I crank up my implants, slowing my relative time, for all ten instances, to cram and practise as much as I possibly can. I take breaks to avoid the reality disconnect I suffered from when transcribing the space marine wargear STC, but it's still unpleasant. Occasionally, I let my mind wander, and as we approach the Mandeville Point I review my works these past four years and worry if I have done enough.

Goibhniu Yards are named after the Celtic god of blacksmithing and architecture. It will assimilate all three of my original shipyards and be far better than a hollowed out asteroid, or naked platforms in the void. I intend for Goibhniu Yards to be a bespoke, well armoured structure, one hundred kilometres in length and twelve kilometres wide, mostly built from ferrocrete made from refinery slag.

Even as the original yards are moved, they do not stop producing and, over four years, Iron Crane and the growing Goibhniu Yards produce three more cobra class destroyers, though they will be getting a new pattern designation after trials are complete.

I won’t be skimping on the Marwolv system’s fixed defences either and they will supplement Dolmelch’s planned monitor fleet. Dozens of hangars are slowly being spread throughout the system and stuffed to the brim with strike craft. I am particularly fond of the squadrons of class three D-POTs outfitted as torpedo bombers.

A flight of five can drop twenty, full sized ship killers at close range, way more than the four usually deployed by a Cobra-Class destroyer. They are a lot more vulnerable than a one point five kilometre escort vessel, but much harder to hit too, so all my Cobras, including Erudition’s Howl, have had their torpedo launchers stripped out, and a single hangar placed amid ships.

There’s just enough room for one full flight of class three D-POTs and five squadrons of escorts: another seventy-five strike craft. The Cobras still have their prow and spine turrets, which have a single lance each, rather than macro-cannons, to save space on ammunition. Between the hangar and the lances, the Cobras no longer need to make risky close runs on enemy vessels, and instead will perform a more long range role used by the larger Sword-Class frigate and its lance variant, the Firestorm.

Because of the massive, permanent change in design, I intend to rename this variant the Adder, and, if it does well, I may retire the Cobra from my fleet. The Adder also comes with a few other additions, like a specialised scrapping and torpedo manufactory that replaces the original torpedo bay, and an empyrean mantle, a facility that reduces detection of imperial ships by approximately thirty percent. I intend to fit my whole fleet with them eventually.

After I account for the usual fields, shields, defences, and engines that I put on all my ships, the Adder variant doesn’t have space for much else and relies on a Lathe-Class light cruiser as part of their five vessel strike group to maintain its mechanical independence from a supply base as well as the active detection of threats at range. It isn’t a long range patrol ship like the Cobra and only good as part of a light cruiser strike group or larger fleet.

It can easily feed its crew though with N.O.Ms making dishes from soylent viridans without trouble, though proper food is preferable and it has a decent hydroponics capability as well. You only need a cubic metre of growing medium per person per day for the engineered micro-algae. That’s a twenty-five metre cube for a crew of fifteen thousand, though in practice it takes about fifty percent more space than that to make room for all the tubes the algae is grown in and the lights that provide it energy.

The only limitation is that the micro-algae consumes one hundred and eighty percent more carbon dioxide than a person breathes out in a day so you need a source of carbon and other micronutrients stored to maintain maximum production. Additional  Human excretions are not sufficient. Soylent viridans isn’t the only source of possible food though on an Adder-Class.

The Adder-Class has three large corridors suitable for growing crops along the wall, or approximately sixty-seven thousand, five hundred square metres of growing space, almost seventeen acres, and it produces fifteen tonnes of food a day, enough to sustain five thousand people. The Distant Sun is even more absurd, with its ten main corridors growing enough fresh vegetables for over fifty one thousand people, over fifteen thousand more people than the non-servitor crew.

Between all five vessels and their combined ninety-five thousand non-servitor personnel, only twenty-five percent of their food would normally need to come from soylent viridans. Fortunately, the Lathe-Class has space for an aquaponics facility too, one that produces about twenty thousand tonnes of shrimp a year in a one point five million cubic metre facility. That almost makes up the shortfall, so crew only have to eat soylent about once a week. It’s not the most varied of diets, when far from the Iron Crane, but it is fresh.

Iron Crane has no such shortcomings and can afford to spend space on grains and other slower growing crops, or turn its manufacturing capacity to edible and nutritious plastics with an almost infinite shelf life. There are also rabbit farms, fish, and other fowl. Really, why anyone supposedly starves in the Imperium is a complete mystery to me, even if all they can eat is soylent viridans.

I doubt anyone ever delivers food to the underhives and their populations would take the most horrendous of gang wars to curb their growth, so something is clearly fishy. I am beginning to wonder if worlds are really as badly off as the stories I have read imply.

Having run the calculations, I just cannot fathom how one could fuck up that badly.

I have a few reservations about the Adder, such as its limited sustainability. It only holds sixty torpedoes. Sure, that’s a battleship sized magazine, but battleships fire their torpedoes in sixes or eights. Not groups of twenty.

The Adder is also a one trick ship, as there isn’t enough space for a sizable boarding force to take advantage of its strike craft, though three companies of heralds is a good force for the vessel’s size, it’s nowhere near enough to make it a boarding focused vessel.

Escort lance turrets aren’t that great at taking out enemy vessels either. You have to fire their lances in coordinated volleys with other escorts to get through a void shield, then get lucky on the hit, as they are precision weapons, not explosive slugs like macro-cannons.

These are not insurmountable problems, and it still packs a bigger punch than the Cobra. I thought about upsizing the Cobra pattern but decided not to as their shorter size means I can fit a third more Adder’s into an Origami so long as I keep it the same size. This is essential when I am the soul navigator.

Ideally, I’ll mix the Adder with other escort classes when I get them as one or two in a strike group is plenty. I’d love to get my mechadendrites on a Nova-Class frigate for example, so long as the Space Marines don’t try to constantly requisition them, as Novas have a lot of guns and are incredibly fast.

Ironically, despite their brilliance, the Imperial Navy and Inquisition hate the Nova-Class frigate as they are actual Space Marine warships, not troop transports, and thus encroach on the precarious balance of power within the Imperium.

A Turbulent-Class heavy frigate would also be a powerful addition as, once you replace their shoddy internal communication systems, they produce a bit more power than most escort vessels and are slightly larger, making them more sustainable and better gunned long term patrol vessels than the Cobra or Sword. Ideal for a nominally nomadic fleet like mine.

Although I will be far from Marwolv, I hope to stay connected. Not only will Goibhniu Yards build new vessels like the Adder and others of greater size, it will nurture millions of people and hold an astropathic relay. I have thousands of braindead, low powered psykers after Tzeentch’s drive-by Rok shoot and they make excellent servitors. Psyker servitors are usually used to link forge temples together and are the closest thing the imperium has to a galactic wide internet.

In theory, the Mechanicus use forge temples to share knowledge with Mars, or request aid. I’ve yet to see how they work in practice as I don’t have one. We are too distant to pick up a transmission, and as I travel through the Koronus Expanse I hope to fix that.

At last we reach the Mandeville point, zero point zero, zero, one, two light years from Marwolv, or approximately twice the distance between Earth and Pluto. I refocus my thoughts and prepare for the big moment.

Eire voxes me, her voice tense and professional. I know what it’s like to leave everything behind and hearing her dread exacerbates my own.

“Are you ready, Magos?”

“I am. Together, aye?”

“Aye, Magos. Initiate warp translation.”

A black dot appears a kilometre in front of Iron Crane and remains in relative position to the vessel as we hurtle through space at zero point zero four seven C. Our constant acceleration at one point eight gravities continues without pause and the black dot stretches slowly over a minute then bursts open into a three point five kilometre wide portal and ceases to move with the vessel.

We shoot through the portal almost instantly and it snaps shut behind us. With the help of thousands of sensors and the esoteric sight of my third eye, I build up an excellent image of the surrounding environment without actually gazing directly at the warp.

Every navigator perceives the warp differently. For some it is a vast labyrinth, while others the skies of a gas giant. I was expecting a few pink clouds and the occasional floating asteroid with hordes of demons flitting through the space like birds in the sky.

Instead I find myself floating on a purple sea, the surface a thin film of empyrean energies as we skim the edges of the warp. High above, deep below and so terribly distant float the great realms of the four chaos lords. They forever flit in and out of my sight, tempting with illusions of might, magic, pleasure and eternal life.

Within the whispers of temptation is the knowledge that should I steer my vessel towards these lands I would arrive at them instantly and, once within, never see beyond their borders ever again. I firm my thoughts and pray to the Emperor.

The whispers fade, but the presence of the chaos lands continue to flicker in my thoughts. At last, I catch a glimpse of the astronomicon and the realm of the Emperor through the thick fog obscuring the surface of the empyrean sea.

As I continue my prayers, hymns reach my ears, telling tales of a  realm of gold and bone not so easily reached as the chaos lands. The Emperor only permits the dead to rest with him.

I cease my prayers and gaze in awe at the infinite tower of the astronomicon. With the astronomicon so distant, all I can see is a straight tower that seemingly nails the Emperor’s domain in place, stretching high above the white chalk lands and right through them to the otherside where the realm floats in the empyrean sea. It is bright gold, almost white, and such is its power that it brushes aside the feeble light of the Emperor’s realm with ease.

Unlike the Emperor’s realm, the light of the Astronomicon is abhorrent. It radiates death and despair with unrelenting ferocity, the souls burning within yell their great betrayal and sacrifice at the Emperor’s hands out into the warp with the final sparks of their burning wills.

The Astronomicon’s light pulses outwards, waning and waxing with each failing soul. It burns anything and everything that strays too close as each soul is snuffed out with a final scream of defiance. The Astronomicon is brutally effective and there is absolutely no way I will ever forget where it is.

I focus on my breathing for several minutes, trying to keep my calm. Eventually, I regain a semblance of composure and absorb the data around me, feeling out the currents of the warp to discover which way we can go.