Herald of the Stars: Chapter Seventy-Seven (Patreon)

Thank you Daniel Chekanov, abowden, Dan Lamb, Barnabas_11, and Nolan wonderous donations. They really encourage me to keep writing Herald of the Stars.

“That will be all, Daithí. Let’s move on to your lesson. Don’t just sit on the command throne, connect to it. I will watch over you.”

“Yes, Magos.”

I oversee Daithí’s practice, connecting to the command throne with a secondary cable and guide him in how to parse that much data. He completes his thirty minute trial without trouble, though he is quite exhausted. Unfortunately for him, Daithí still has another four hours left in his shift.

Afterwards, I leave the bridge and travel to the navigator’s spire. I sit in the chapel, upon the steps leading down into Quaani’s sepulchre where he lies beneath a stasis field. His skin has a grey hue, his arms and legs are thin and disproportionately large to his frame, making him three and a half metres tall. If I did not know it was him, I would not recognise Quaani compared to the first time I found him.

I pat his casket, “Hi Quaani. I hope your dreams are pleasant.”

Closing my eyes, I enjoy the silence. Taking multiple, large, slow breaths I realise the pain has subsided and my body and armour are back to a hundred percent. I focus on my examination of the navigator conversion E-SIM has provided me.

Unlike the three words the Emperor bothered to spare for me when I first woke up, the papers describing the navigator conversion process contain several digital scans of the Emperor’s hand written notes as well as scientific papers from hundreds of other studies that give the background information required to understand the detailed explanations of the conversion process.

I don’t know how the Emperor did so, but even in a digital space, His words glow with power, ready to fuel the conversion. His words lack the impact and flash of insight that were present in his good luck note. Instead, they hum with purpose, like ancient machinery waiting to roar back to action.

Their power unsettles me and I feel there is something here I cannot see. There is a finality to these words that I believe will not just change my mind and body, but my fate too. If I accept this ‘blessing’, the Emperor’s direct and deliberate touch would be upon my body. Well, more so than he has done already. Given his abysmal record of care for even his most vital of subjects, I am absolutely convinced this will screw me in a manner I won’t see coming.

One could argue that with so much out there to kill me, what does one more matter? There’s a big difference, however, between random encounters, eldar plots, and demonic stalkers to having the Emperor take an interest in you, because then everyone else wants a glance as well.

Before those consequences stab me in the back, my main hurdle is that, with the exception of the Emperor, navigator conversion requires a psyker to volunteer for conversion. The process can only be guided by a navigator of great power and skill in conjunction with the same type of arcanotech medical nanites that I have.

The conversion also requires a specialised facility an order of magnitude larger than any vessel that I possess as well as multiple psychic batteries, i.e. psychers, to power the process.

It is a project great enough it would take forgeworlds to cooperate to build the terran moon sized facility.

The good news is that medical facilities for navigator maladies are much smaller and I could fit one inside an interstellar cargo container, or into every navigator spire.

The bad news is that to help Quaani, it requires a navigator skilled in biomancy and the skills, tools, and knowledge of a magos biologis. A navigator’s specialist powers do not delve into biomancy beyond alleviating fatigue, so this is already a major block.

However, all is not lost. Since my fuck up with tau weaponry and tabletop rules I have learned that balanced gameplay, forty thousand year old lore, and my current reality rarely match. Considering how much the fictional lore contradicted itself, that really should not have come as the surprise it did. Now that I think about it, Aruna’s avatar and the other machine-spirits were a big hint.

However, I have observed that, so far, the broad strokes, like locations, major events, and the attitudes of the factions I have encountered are similar to those described in the videos Jamie uploaded to my card.

From Quaani’s studies at the clubhouse, I know that, contrary to my ‘historical accounts’, navigators can learn psyker disciplines on top of their third eye navigator powers. I have also discovered that all psykers and navigators are capable of minor powers in the five disciplines: Biomancy, Divination, Pyromancy, Telekinesis, and Telepathy.

I haven’t met or studied an astropath, another specialist psyker type. Astropaths receive their bonus powers from the Emperor at the cost of their vision, rather than through genetic engineering, like a navigator, or a chance mutation, like a standard psyker. One still has to be born a psyker to be soul-bound into an astropath though.

I suspect astropaths are capable of the same minor powers as psykers and navigators are, but I am yet to confirm. For all I know, the soul-binding ritual that almost always burns out an astropath’s eyes and connects them to the Emperor, stunts their power elsewhere.

There are verified accounts of faith miracles achieved by ministorum priests and the sisters of battle in the Distant Sun’s database but no data on if they are a psyker based power channelled by the individual borrowing the Emperor’s power, or if they are the Emperor reaching out a pushing his own power through a sufficiently devout individual. I have no idea if these blessed individuals are psykers or not.

I can confirm that most navigators and psykers are hardy and can resist disease and mutation, detect immediate threats, spew a two metre cone of warpfire, levitate small, light objects, and sense strong emotions, without putting themselves at risk. Anything else requires significant discipline, knowledge, and practice.

For a navigator, using psyker powers negates the natural protection against corruption, mutation, and possession that channelling the warp through their third eye grants. This protection limitation was confirmed by both Quaani, who found he had to resist such terrors when using psyker powers, as well as the information E-SIM granted me.

Given the demon exorcising properties of their eyes, a canny and determined navigator could, potentially, exorcise a demon that tried to possess them before it could get too great a hold.

I have no accounts of someone being possessed twice, and the Imperium has been known to experiment with demon possession to create incorruptible individuals. While it almost always ends in a darwin award, it works just often enough that people keep trying it. Creating or becoming an incorruptible navigator is immensely tempting and I hope someone would shoot me before I attempted something so idiotic.

Using abilities that negate a navigator’s natural protection is a terrible idea, especially when a navigator has plenty of other ways to ruin an enemy’s day and so they rarely learn to do so. Their wealth and status usually grants them at least company of elite guards, excellent armour, a conversion shield, a whole host of implants, master crafted weapons, and many other protections.

They just don’t need to take the risks that a psyker does with their lower status and wealth.

If I want to use navigator conversion, I won’t have such liberties. There are no other navigators around to learn the process, nor is it guaranteed I can find a navigator willing to learn such skills and knowledge. I can’t create new navigators within a practical time scale either.

I have two main options.

Curing Quaani myself would keep the knowledge secret and keep me safe. With a cured Quaani, leaving Marwolv would be much less risky too.

I would have to become a navigator, which is going to cause me all sorts of trouble. Demons will be knocking on my mind at all hours as I train in biomancy, while navigator houses and the adeptus mechanicus will kick up a fuss about there being a magos explorator navigator, two major branches of imperial authority that, to my knowledge, have never mixed as thoroughly as I will need to.

I drum my fingers against the stone steps.

The other option is that I risk travelling the warp without a navigator, survive the journey, recruit a navigator family, and give them the knowledge on how to control navigator mutations in exchange for their service, then have them fix Quaani. Assuming I can get a house to agree, that is.

The plus is that I don’t have to become a navigator. The downside is that I’m risking hundreds of thousands of people and multiple void ships in exchange for my own needs. This is not an exchange I object to, even if I would feel fucking awful about it. The problem is I would be on those ships too.

My minor options include leaving Quaani in stasis until the end of time, or searching the galaxy for his house that, for all I know, is now extinct, and hope they have the knowledge to help him. I could also kill Quaani, or use him until he dies, but those are really shitty options.

I stand and pace up and down the chapel, trying to reframe the problem. No matter what I do, I need navigators. I just don’t want to risk travelling the warp without one. It doesn’t help that I also consider becoming a navigator an equally stupid idea.

There is also absolutely nothing I can do about any traces of power the Emperor may leave behind or stop any sufficiently powerful individual from noticing my artificial changes if I bump into them.

My gellar field should deter such auguries and it should also continue to hide me from demons, even if I become a navigator. They are, at least, managed risks.

One could argue that His touch is a blessing, one that could benefit me. However, new saints, or any hint of a miracle, usually result in a religious schism I want no part of. The accounts on the Distant Sun are quite detailed on such things, even if they are lousy with ridicule.

Increased inquisitorial scrutiny from such rumours is almost a certainty and that would cause all sorts of trouble. I can’t afford to lie to the inquisition as that has vile penalties when they inevitably catch you out and don’t want them to know the truth either. While they would have to track me down, they specialise in such tasks and I don't fancy my chances at avoiding a determined inquisitor.

I know that some eldar and chaos forces are aware of the E-SIM project and have tried to eliminate it. Both of these forces probably think I am dead or are dead themselves.

Baphomel of the Horned Darkness knows that I live and, from his specific targeting of me, via my servitors, tau hybrids, and probably the orks, I must have something he wants. I do not know if he has knowledge of the E-SIM project. He has not shown any so far.

What he does want, I do not know. It could be anything from STCs, to E-SIM, to some dark fetish hidden on the Distant Sun that got mixed up in the ferrocrete of the outer ablative armour.

I have caused him significant damage and E-SIM can now track him in the warp. Baphomel will likely be back for more regardless of navigator conversion.

The Imperium likely knows nothing of me and what I can do, nor should the tau, necrons, tyranids, or any of the minor races. Hopefully, it will stay that way, as I do not want a crazy necron lord like Trazyn the Infinite hunting me down to add to his ‘collection’.

If I don’t want to benefit from declaring miracles and choose to hide any potential traces as best I can, I could benefit from selling navigation conversion technology instead. At the very least I should offer the mutation management technology.

Enabling the Imperium to create navigators, especially ones without twenty millenia of genetic drift, will make a huge difference and give me even more political immunity than being a rogue trader, or selling STCs would. As political immunity is one of my primary goals, I should pursue it further. I can probably get the best result by handing the knowledge directly to Roboute Guilliman so it actually gets used and should help me avoid an onerous recruitment or a torturous demise.

Roboute Guilliman is a space marine primarch, Lord Commander of the Imperium and the Imperial Regent. He is as famous for his statecraft as he is for his warcraft, allegedly.

While chasing him down would be a significant time investment and a risky endeavour, it should be worth it; Roboute Guilliman is possibly the only person who can keep the inquisition and other imperial factions off my back from the absolute shit storm that will follow me after selling my STCs, or the navigator knowledge.

Belisarius Cawl, an incredibly powerful tech-priest, could probably protect me too, though I’d have to avoid his vivisection table. I think I’d rather try and leave the galaxy than trust him though.

I could choose not to sell at all, but no matter how shit the Imperium is, I do want to give my fellow humans a greater chance at survival. There’s no point being a rogue trader if all your clients are dead. Cowering at Marwolv, or hiding in the koronus expanse, when I have a whole galaxy to explore, and xenos to hunt, isn’t going to increase personal power or help me find some proper builders tea. There’s got to be some real tea in the Imperium somewhere, right?

A more immediate concern is that it will take me many months, if not years, to understand navigator genetics enough to pass E-SIM’s test. Thanks to the orks I will need that time as they’ve damaged the shipyard and the almost completed Iron Crane.

On the other hand it was the orks who gifted me enough kills to purchase the navigator conversion upgrade and life extension technology so that I actually have the lifespan to fix all the shit they broke. Distant Sun and Erudition’s Howl don’t have rejuvenat facilities on board, or the data to build them.

I have mixed feelings about this.

I remove my helmet and rest my head against the cold stone. Gradually, I drift off to sleep.

Two hours later, I wake from my nap. My mind is clear again and my thoughts have stopped circling. With this renewed clarity, comes a realisation on a different, though related, issue. I possess a lot of vital knowledge and while I have plenty of backups, E-SIM has only one database and no off-body backup.

Losing E-SIM’s data would likely take my entire body’s destruction, at which point it would no longer be my problem. However, something out there that might wipe E-SIM, like the heavy arc rifle specifically designed to destroy machine-spirits, that I like to run around with and blast all my enemies with. To minimise this risk, I will spend my crown on warp infrastructure so E-SIM can have another storage location.

E-SIM is restricted from placing its core data on anything it is not directly linked to at all times with an effectively uninterruptible link. I could, potentially, side step the issue by creating the same sort of psychic link between me and a database on Distant Sun using a psychic servitor.

I would need to be a psyker of some kind as well and it would tie up one of my minds to be a constant data link. Alternatively, I could carry around a psyker brain in a jar at all times. I may even use one of these options as a temporary solution, but neither are something I want to do permanently.

I could choose the krork tech tree and its subspace options instead of warp infrastructure. However, it comes with a side effects warning but doesn’t say what they might be.

Returning to Quaani, I pat his casket a second time, then leave the chapel. I’ve spent enough time musing for one day. I should check in with Thorfinn and see what we can come up with to purge the alien.