Herald of the Stars: Chapter Eighty-Four (Patreon)

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I wince, “Questions like possession experimentation and other foolhardy sorcery are why many imperials believe the tau empire, despite its impressive technology, is a self correcting problem.”

“No need to be rude, Magos.”

“That isn’t my opinion. However, you need only consider the steps that resulted in you sitting by me today, begging for sanctuary, to understand why many imperials hold this view.”

Lynu frowns.

“Now, to actually answer your question,” I say, “we can’t test possession on people, even criminals, as psykers cannot possess others. I have no intention of learning the vile rituals required to summon a warp entity to assist in testing. Some individuals may be desperate, dumb, or prideful enough to attempt it. They are of little concern as, well, they’re a self correcting problem. As for how effective electoo wards and sacred blood are against possession I only have one data point. Since adopting both methods I have not had a repeat possession event.”

Lynu folds her arms, almost hugging herself, “Your explanation does not lack clarity, Magos.” She looks up at the stars for a few breaths, then returns her gaze to me. “We are not ready to abandon our beliefs and convert to the machine cult, Magos. I will revisit the trade for sacred blood when it has been more thoroughly tested.

“We would, however, like to purchase your warding electoos and the materials required to implant them, as well as rent the needed tools and employ a pair of tech-priests to assist in our understanding and implementation of these electoos.

“We offer all our combined exo-womb and knowledge implantation technology in exchange, as requested. However, we are in no hurry to implement the electoos if we are indeed as safe within the hull of your vessel as you imply. Instead, we wish to purchase these materials with the bytes that we earn by working for you. How long do you estimate it will take to earn sufficient funds to acquire the tools, materials, and guidance we will need?”

“For three hundred tau? Twenty years.”

Lynu’s eyes widen, “Are you, as you imperials like to say, pulling my leg?”

“No.” I pass her a data slate with the current price for everything she has asked alongside the projected wages of the prisoners. I also add a comparison using my own adepts’ and priests’ wages in similar jobs, as well as their spending habits.

“I am not pleased to see this, Magos, and require additional time to think this over. You are far more wealthy than I believed. I regret our previous altercations immensely.”

“So do I, Envoy.”

Lynu gives me a sharp nod and a weak smile, “We will still provide the exo-womb and knowledge combination technology and provide the schematics for our civilian brain-machine interface implants. As for the other items we require,” she pauses, “is there anything else we can do to alleviate our burdens?”

“That’s enough cultural exchange for today, Envoy Lynu. I’ve done a lot of the work and volunteered a lot of information. I did this to set an example for future cooperation, not to symbolise the beginning of a one sided trend. Come back to me with a genuine offer for a technology or service you think I need. I am already providing all the tools you need to interact with the crew and find out what that might be.”

“Ah. You are a direct individual, Magos.”

I snort, “This is your big chance to surprise me. Your only chance.” I look past her at her two guards. “Take her back to the guest quarters.”

The two heralds salute me.

Lynu stands, then bows to me, “Good day, Magos.”

I think back to the ork scout report and the new targeting data that Aruna can infer from it and smile, “It sure is!”

Lynu pales and swiftly departs.

It’s time to introduce the orks to a traditional terran meme from my ill spent youth.

“Omae wa mou shindeiru,” I mutter.

For security reasons, fire orders must be given in person by me, or authorised by two first or second class officers working in tandem on the bridge, though Eire is the only first class officer present on Distant Sun. With that in mind, I head to the bridge, feeling that all my troubles are a button press away.

Third officer Seoras Lùtair is the primary officer for the fifth watch and is on the bridge when I arrive. Like most of Marwolv’s citizens he’s over a hundred and eighty centimetres tall with bright red hair, mild freckles, and pale skin. He sits upright upon the command throne with his eyes closed. A thick cable is plugged into the metal collar of his undersuit. A helmet with a clear faceplate covers his head.

Seoras Lùtair is wearing the new uniform designed by purser Brigid Mac'Ille na Brataich, and the cut and colours are greatly improved from my first attempts.

His new uniform includes red, brass, and dark green tartan trousers and waistcoat with a rust coloured, herringbone tweed-imitation shirt and a dark green, almost black great coat with brass buttons. Black gloves cover his hands, to keep the wear and tear on his undersuit to a minimum.

The cog and skull of the mechanicus is embroidered on his waistcoat over his heart and a series of patches on the left arm of his greatcoat displays his rank. Distant Sun in silver lettering is embroidered on the back of his greatcoat, across his shoulders, with my own symbol beneath it: my plasteel pipe turned crowsbeak power hammer, also embroidered in silver thread and placed inside a brass cog.

The uniform is woven from flak weave and the greatcoat is reinforced with flexible, armaplas inserts and has the same chemical and radiation resistance treatments as a Kreig greatcoat.

I think it looks rather smart and I’m rather pleased with Brigid’s efforts.

While similar, my designs were more utilitarian and I’d put armaplas inserts in the trousers and waistcoat too, which wasn’t that comfortable and ended up being too heavy for normal people. I hadn’t noticed thanks to my void skin and hyperweave musculature. Now the trousers only have the inserts over the knees.

Brigid also got rid of the optional kilts to enforce proper protection for everyone. I’d allowed them to give people a chance to express a little individuality, but Brigid has replaced them with two different clothing cuts for each item, for both males and females, that people can mix and match instead, while keeping the same colours, buttons, and embroidery to keep everyone looking, well, uniform.

I chuckle, that would mean that besides war, the other immortal constant in the forty second millennium is dad jokes.

I’ve noticed that the officers tend to choose the suit trousers and high cut waistcoat with a single row of brass buttons that have quite tight fits, whereas everyone else goes for utility trousers with extra pockets and the double breasted waistcoat as the buttons don’t catch as easily when lifting objects of using machinery.

Dragonscale power armour is my equivalent of a uniform. I wore the mechanicus red robe for a while, but it gets in the way of my servo harness and having a cloak with a giant hole in the back is rather pointless. Instead, my armour is Mars red, with silver trim and brass detailing, to match with the rest of my crew.

I ping Seoras and he opens his eyes and smiles.

“Good afternoon, Magos.”

“Hello, Seoras. How fares the watch?”

“Nothing unexpected for Distant Sun. The orks assaulted Dôl South Prime two hours ago and were repelled with three percent casualties of which twelve percent were fatalities.”

I nod, “The engineers must have finally got enough floating fortifications in place with those numbers. I’ll authorise an off duty beer ration for them. That last attack marks all four compass prime bases that the orks have tried now. How are the PDF forces doing?”

“All of Dôl’s remaining PDF are still focused on disaster relief and reorganising themselves after massive losses. Eire’s initial casualty estimates of fifty thousand were way off as both sides were keeping more troops on their borders than they’d reported. The Monadh Republic and Pailt Empire on Dôl not only lost all their armour but half their PDF too. They are down to one hundred thousand each.

“Brisgean and Llannerch are stockpiling resources and moving civilians to fortified refugee camps in case of dark eldar or ork raids. It’s slow going as they don’t have enough vehicles. Our class three D-POTs have been recalled from around the system to speed everything up. The majority will be with us in sixty hours, but ten percent of them are staying out there and have begun to search for webway gates in case they’re out in the system, rather than on Marwolv.”

I fold my arms, and tap my finger against my bicep, “I was hoping they would bolster our numbers against the orks, but I did ask Dimpsy Fortress commander, Dougal MacCrane, to coordinate with the PDF and told him those tasks needed to be done, so I can’t complain too much.

“As for the D-POT’s we really don’t need the extra resources so long as we can continue to harvest the roks, I am happy with those orders to remain. Is Dougal using the stellar corps stationed at Dimpsy Fortress and Anglewitch to relieve and reinforce Drumbledrone’s forces around the orks?”

“Ah, I’ll ping you the report that came in during the last watch. I’ve been too busy running drills with the trainees to read it and it wasn’t marked urgent.”

I hold up my hand, “No need, Seoras, I’ve already found it. Looks like Commander MacCrane is preparing to sweep through the ork territory and is requesting a bombardment within the next thirty-six hours. He and I clearly think alike. Let’s get that underway shall we?”

A small grin flashes over Seoras face before returning to his practised placid expression, “Aye, aye, Magos.”

“Go ahead, Seoras, show me how it’s done.”

Seoras blinks rapidly and his lips tighten. He takes a deep breath and swaps to shipwide vox.

“All crew, this is third officer Seoras Lùtair. Distant Sun is at yellow alert, I repeat, yellow alert. This is not a drill. Fifth watch, prepare for orbital bombardment.”

Seoras gestures to me and I commandeer his vox channel, “All crew, orbital bombardment authorised, Magos Issengrund out.” I swap back to the proximity channel. “Carry on, Seoras.”

Seoras addresses the bridge and gunnery crews, “Trainee ordinance officer,  Lonceta Ridel, load the port macro-cannons with melta shells and charge the prow and spinal lances. Don’t rush the crews, we’re not under fire. Trainee helm officer, Darragh Selkirk, position us above central Dôl and bring us to a stationary orbit. Be gentle with the thrusters and keep out reaction mass expenditure to a minimum. You both have one hour.”

Next, Seoras contacts our ground forces. “Commander MacCrane, this is Distant Sun, your request for orbital support has been authorised. Fire mission begins in six zero minutes.” He glances up at me, “How long do we bombard for, Magos?”

“You really should have asked that first: twenty-four hours.”

Seoras winces, “I’ll add that to my notes.” He continues his message to Dimpsy Fortress, “Fire mission will last for twenty-four hours. Distant Sun out.” Seoras sighs, “Apologies, Magos. Addressing the whole crew still makes me a little nervous.”

I smile, “That just means you’re taking it seriously. Let’s go over that checklist of yours while we wait, eh?”

“Yes, Magos.”

Seoras and I spend the next hour practising his protocol and public speaking. He makes no mistakes when it’s just the two of us and has clearly put a lot of practice into enunciating clearly and learning the proper scripts by heart, rather than have his MIU feed him the words. He’s only two months into his stint as a third officer after finishing his tech-adept training and the one year officer conversion course that he took from my equivalent of the schola progenium, the imperium’s officer academy.

My officer training course is quite different as rather than training war orphans with faith, fasting, and furious sparing, it focuses more on teaching adults applied sciences, data driven diets, and competitive simulations with the muscle stimulation turned up to max. It’s an incredibly tough course, but unlike the schola progenium, my technology means I don’t have to recycle dead children into corpse starch for the surviving kids after live-fire exercises.

Darragh does a good job of plotting out a course and puts us into a stationary orbit within forty minutes. Lonceta takes a little longer as she has to keep halting the crew on one of the guns who keep giving the servitors the wrong orders and manage to damage one of the loading cranes. From Lonceta’s tirade I learn they’re trying to one up each other with ‘harmless’ pranks.

Fortunately the damage control team is much more competent and they swap out the broken parts in nine minutes flat. I am a little surprised when Lonceta files the careless gunnery team for criminal negligence and they get taken away for a tier one sentence at the brig, but they could have killed a lot of people if they kept messing about so I don’t object.

They’ll be out after a month, but jail time and a fine are the least of their worries as they’ll have plenty of time to reconsider their work ethic from inside a boarding torpedo or other assault shuttle the next time I have to order a boarding action.