Herald of the Stars: Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Five (Patreon)

Many thanks to Marco Belina and Karin for donating to Herald of the Stars. I am most grateful for your contributions.

There is no April Fools post, so no need to worry about if this chapter is cannon or not!

Replete and content, Brigid and I enjoy an after dinner meander through our new treasure vault. Brigid points out each of the objects, who chose it, and why we absolutely have to have it. She isn’t serious about the reasons in the slightest.

I sip on my amasec and grimace.

“Aldrich, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t get the taste of whale out of my mouth. It was good, but every dish?”

Brigid laughs, “It was a bit much.”

“I don’t think Quaani quite understood what he was ordering. Tomorrow I expect it will be all seal meat. Still, I shouldn’t complain. Few get to eat real meat, let alone a delicacy.”

“Yet we have enough for the whole crew. What are we going to do with the crude biomass?”

I say, “Vitae womb nutrients. It’s not like they taste anything while they grow.”

“Four megatonnes will get us two million new crew,” says Brigid. “Seems a bit of a waste when we can press whomever we need.”

“I don’t want more penal regiments. The culture shock just isn’t worth dealing with unless we have to. Much better to grow our own. Maeve had to form three more penal regiments after we finished vetting all the new crew and freed slaves, even after replenishing all the recent losses with our current penal regiment.”

“Most of them actually survived their sentences didn’t they?”

“Yes. They were well trained and many chose to join the Heralds permanently, which was most helpful as we need two more regiments to fill out Torchbearer and another three for Ardent Bane. The new colony is getting four new regiments. Two mixed regiments, one of which will be a penal regiment, one void assault regiment, and one battle automata regiment.”

“That still leaves us with three penal regiments to fit somewhere,” says Brigid. “Torchbearer already has one, so one could go to Ardent Bane. Iron Crane already has its full complement of three regiments. Where will the rest go? The Carrack-Class Transports are a bit too small to need a whole regiment as a security force each and only using penal troops for that is asking for mutiny.”

I say, “We’ll need those extra regiments for controlling the Breaking Yards. For now, some of our cargo holds are being converted to hold them. We’ll have to stack ‘em high and keep them stuck in VR training. I’ve subcontracted Cobalt to produce enough sleeping pods in exchange for one of the penal regiments, leaving us with two. We have enough equipment in storage to outfit one immediately. Mattius is rather pleased to have his forces boosted by thirty percent.”

“I’m surprised Cobalt can manufacture our sleeping pods.”

“They’re only providing parts, not assembly and data. Their cogitators and manufacturing is way below our standards, but they are functional, and that’s good enough for now. Not ideal, but better than putting all those people in stasis when they could be learning. They’d never get a chance to adjust if we did it that way. As it is, those few weeks will feel like a decade for them. Not something we usually do.”

“That still sounds wasteful, Aldrich. What will we do with all those pods when we’re done with them?”

I shrug, “Depends how bad they are.”

“Fair enough. Whatever happened to Kai Ballantyne? Did he survive his sentence?”

“Yes. I left him on the Tau on the Macro-Ferry. His mind is not quite the same after overseeing the processing of so much Blackstone. He has lost his drive and now monitors the Macro-Ferry’s internal transport networks. Watching the trains go around and around brings him a measure of peace and satisfaction, apparently.”

“For the best. He might be qualified for a better position, but it is better to promote others who have worked hard.”

“Perhaps one day he will take up teaching again.”

“We do not lack talent, nor the resources to coddle every failure. Speaking of which, we have some new mutants to deal with. They are far larger in number than the Ratling contingent. Seven thousand, I believe, and there are likely many more that we haven’t located yet. We may have secured our new vessels, but investigating every corner will take far more than a couple of months.”

“Any reason why we don’t turn them into full cyborgs?” I say. “At the very least we need a sample from all of them. Who knows what lost genetic wonders are hidden in their corrupt genomes?”

“It would be far more expedient to shoot them. We have a surplus of poorly trained crew already.”

“In the short term, perhaps. It is a dangerous precedent considering the fitness and medical check everyone gets every fifteen months. Can you imagine the chaos from generating that much fear? You’re the numbers girl, Brigid. You see exactly how much productivity drops when people don’t care about who they work for, or why their tasks are important.”

Bridgid huffs, “It’s a month of Servitor construction capacity for their new bodies, plus a lot of expensive medicine. We need to replace all of the Servitors on Ardent Bane to get them up to Stellar Fleet standards. That’s six hundred and twelve thousand Servitors, approximately.

“Torchbearer is also twenty percent below expected numbers and requires sixty-six thousand new Servitors. Then there are our minor automata losses from our most recent conflicts with Trader Modren and the Orks, as well as general replacement and repair. Our lines are maxed for the next eight years and we do not have space to increase production.”

Then tension in Brigid’s voice rises as she continues, “We don’t have enough education or medical capacity to deal with our sudden influx of personnel either. We’ve passed five million sapient organics, three million of whom have joined us in the past two months, not including the vessels, colonists, or regiments we are leaving behind. We neither need, want, nor use menials. Not only that, but Ardent Bane is not self-sustaining like our vessels are.”

I sigh, “We’re not going to kill people because they inconvenience us. You are better than this Brigid. We are also about to embark on a big journey to buy more vessels. I have no issue with trading for Goliath-Class vessels, even if I have to dedicate one to making automata. Thanks to Quaani, we have over a century of food supplies in storage, even for that many people. More than enough time to solve any issues. What has you so worried that you are worrying about seven thousand mutants?”

“Sorry, Aldrich. I’m really stressed out. It’s just so overwhelming dealing with so many new people. Yes, I’ve taken all the necessary steps to alleviate it but it takes time to train new administrators and create the systems required to process large and sudden influxes.”

I put my glass down, hug Brigid, and gently rub her back. “So would now be a bad time to say I found a new STC to help us mass produce light power armour that requires substantial quantities of rare elements?”

Brigid holds her breath for ten seconds then says, “Yes.”

“Alright. Let's stop gawking at the treasures pretending we know what they’re all about, and snuggle on the sofa. You can tell me the problems we’re having with our currency. I’ll make a decision and inform Fleet command, saving us from a big meeting. That will be one more thing ticked off your list of troubles.”

“Mmm, your offering is accepted.”

I gently guide Brigid back to the sitting room. We sit and say nothing for several minutes as she lies spreadeagled across the sofa, her head resting in my lap as I gently stroke her hair.

“Aldrich, tell me what your original intention for our bytes currency was. I am certain I know why you went with a temporary scrip, but this is too important for me to go with an educated guess.”

I smile, “It was never intended to be a real currency, but a ration credit to ensure efficient distribution of resources through the Fleet. That’s why it’s based on a unit of energy, the kilowatt hour. It makes it easy to understand exactly what everything is worth, from the labour of machines, to every breath we take. Anyone can look at any process and know what the value next to it actually means. This is incredibly useful for facilitating internal and external exchanges.”

“Good, that’s what I expected.”

“There are a lot of reasons why I went with a temporary currency, but it all boils down to stability, security, control, and consistency. I didn’t have much when I first arrived at Marwolv. I could talk about how entropy means an energy based currency must take that into account, but that means little on a practical time scale. Especially when one can bottle solar mass and store it for millennia with no appreciable loss of energy.”

Brigid laughs.

I continue, “One reason was that it was an experiment. All our processes have a set value that, without new STCs, barely fluctuates. As such, bytes are not a traditional currency as even a small amount of inflation or deflation is undesirable. The currency deletion is a method of controlling inflation.

“In practice, because I have a monopoly on power production, deleting bytes turned out to be mostly unnecessary. I can delete bytes when people pay me for the power that they use, even if it’s the budget that I gave them in the first place, giving me near perfect control of the currency in circulation. I didn’t know that when I started the experiment though.”

“So part of the reason is that you didn’t know any better and wanted to find out,” says Brigid. “That was a big risk you took.”

“It was worth it,” I say. “All that data will be of great assistance for any changes you wish to implement.”

“Most personnel have never known anything else at this point. You’re right that we need all the data we can get.”

I nod, “Another reason for the temporary ration credits was that I wanted people to spend their money and invest in their own education and implants. If one knows that their money is going to become worthless, they will spend all of it and invest it into tangible goods that maintain and build their wealth.

“This has the added benefit of circulating the economy as fast as possible, preventing stagnation. Even now, our internal economy is still small, so if people don’t spend their money, wealth generation would be stifled rapidly and I would have to intervene. An undesirable outcome for all.”

“Ah, that makes a lot of sense,” says Brigid. “No one likes it when their governing body interferes with their livelihood. A small mistake and all their efforts and savings can become worthless overnight.”

“Just so. While one could waste their bytes on luxury food, sex, and entertainment, and many do actually do so, the only way to build personal wealth in an area with limited space and private industry is to invest in oneself, personal security, or research. These are areas I prioritise as it improves the productivity, high tech production capacity, and the security of the fleet over time.

“A temporary currency lets me encourage these desirable behaviours, rather than making a bunch of regulations few would want to follow, which would erode my authority over time.”

“Would you say behavioural incentives have worked?” says Brigid.

“They have,” I smile. “We have a much higher percentage of Magi than most Mechanicus enclaves and worlds. From the historical data that we have, only Mars is superior.”

“That’s rather impressive and sneaky of you, Love.”

I laugh, “Not really. It’s taught in economics classes!”

“Yet no one gives it a second thought,” says Brigid, smirking.

“My economic directives benefit them,” I shrug.

“Please continue.”

“A shared currency ties people to the Stellar Fleet,” I say. “They can’t spend their money anywhere else. While this had little relevance in the beginning, as our holdings and Fleet grow, this has become more and more important. It doesn’t stop people from converting money via goods, but that’s something I actually want. Like with the Stellar Requisition Credits we introduced for big purchases, it gets our currency into the Koronus Expanse and then other polities have to spend our currency with us.

“Bytes do not change in value, regardless of distance, time, or location. In a galaxy where these variables are controlled by uncaring gods, bytes are a massive stabilising influence. The system only works so long as the state, meaning me in this case, has total control.

“I don’t see this as a bad thing as it incentivises me to secure energy production far more than private enterprise would, and given how reliant we are on our machines, this is not a vulnerability we can hand over to private enterprise just to save money. The same goes for water, food, air, and ammunition but these do not make such great currencies as they are, arguably, harder to store and transfer across time and space than electricity is.”

“I don’t quite agree with that,” says Brigid. “An energy currency is based on its fuels: hydrogen, promethium, atomics, and solar plasma. None of these are easy to move about.”

“Between systems perhaps, but once you are groundside, or within a closely knit Fleet, power is much easier to transfer. We could even do so with lasers or microwave emitters if we really wanted to. Within a system, with the required infrastructure, one can beam power from one location to another, or collect it from sunlight.

“That most Imperial currencies are based on precious metals, or fiat currencies backed by the Tithe, like Throne Gelts, is archaic and ridiculous. The only one that makes any sense to me is the exchange of favours among the nobility, but that’s no good for buying one’s daily bread.”

Brigid grabs my hand, stopping me from stroking her hair, and holds it against her stomach. “That’s a good argument, and if you weren’t talking about spreading a stable currency through the Koronus Expanse, I would accept it. As it is, you’re really talking about a hydrogen standard.

“I agree that using metallic hydrogen pellets, or atomic metals as coins would be quite silly and that using energy as a universal currency is convenient within a system. Saying that it is easier to transport between systems though is foolish. If one must go through the Warp to transport something, it is equally difficult, no matter its container, or its state of matter.”

I chuckle, “Yeah, I can concede that point. So what exactly is it that you wanted to change about bytes and why?”