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

Lambert, Jack2, and SVDDXNLY, I am delighted you are sponsoring Herald of the Stars. This orbital bombardment is for you.

“Trainee officer Ridel,” says Seoras, “Targets for bombardment are the rear rok mass, now designated Barrel, and the three shards in order of proximity to Barrel: Pan, Embers, and Ash.

“All bombardments are to proceed with up to two lance strikes for targeting strikes, then a melta macro-cannon bombardment, once every thirty minutes using alternating port and starboard macro-cannons, beginning with port cannons. Fire rates will double once the trainee fifth watch is over. Twelve hours are to be spent on Barrel and four hours on the other three targets. Begin bombardment when ready.”

I notice a little back and forth on the vox between Lonceta Ridel and Darragh Selkirk. Then the first lance strike from the spinal turret pierces through the churning atmosphere. Sensors all over Marwolv pick up the strike and are fed back to Dimpsy Fortress and then Distant Sun.

The initial data suggest they’ve hit where Barrel is supposed to be, but the trainee crew doesn’t notice that they haven’t actually struck a dense metal object. Lonceta gives the order for the macro-cannon’s to fire and Aruna interferes, slamming all their MIUs with error messages.

After some confusion, Lonceta and her crew figure out where they’ve gone wrong and fire the second lance and the sensors return a proper strike. Aruna unlocks the macro-cannon fire control and the massive shells are expelled from the port guns.

Marwolv’s atmosphere swirls behind the shells and eight bright lights set the clouds aglow with fire and spite. As best we can tell, the shells are on target, but there’s far too much noise on the seismic sensor net after such a strike to be absolutely sure.

“Good work, Seoras. If Lonceta doesn’t file herself and her crew for extra practice, discipline, and physical training by the time her next shift comes round, assign them a week’s worth of maintenance in the bilges to be completed in their free time on top of the actual remedial work. Don’t warn any of them in advance either.”

“Should I make that a standard practice, Magos?”

“Use your own judgement. A wasted salvo is an expensive and dangerous error. One that, in ship to ship combat, puts the whole vessel at risk, or in this case, Marwolv and its peoples. Smaller errors, such as burying one’s head in their datapad and terminating the wanderings with a power wash out of the auto-loader is a tragedy of design and a disciplinary opportunity for the remainder of the team. The potential damage to the vessel and crew is lower and thus further action should not be required.”

“I hate how callus that is, Magos, even if I understand the logic of it.”

I shrug, “Then conduct a safety review, or work on a simulation time to workplace error comparison paper; work with your fellow officers, and see where our training can be improved or crew alertness and discipline can be maintained long term through diet, rest, and incentives.

“These are just examples. The point is, propose different methods, and test them. Don’t wait for stuff to go wrong. I’m not perfect and while the work that’s already in place hasn’t truly let us down yet, there’s clearly more to be tweaked. Not all methods work for all crew and their work locations after all and some of our protocols are a little generic.”

Seoras stares at me, “I was unaware that such initiative was permitted. The archives do not spare the reader from the terminal consequences for a litany of officers who tried to alter protocols.”

“So long as you have well researched and concise proposals, and enough personnel willing to try something new, I will always put aside the time to examine your work. Being a third officer comes with perks beyond a better living space, a fat wallet, and a longer list of possible implants. It gives you a direct line to me and a chance to affect meaningful change within my fleet. A chance to bask in the satisfaction of improving tens of thousands of lives and the admiration of your peers and crew. Do well enough and you are one of the few people with a chance to earn your own command.”

Seoras chuckles, “You’re laying it on a bit thick there, Magos. I appreciate the opportunity though.”

“Of course you do,” I smirk. I clap my hands together once, “Well, that’s enough pep talk. Those mark two Marwolv pattern lasguns won’t design themselves.”

“I’ll keep you updated on the bombardment, Magos, and notify you of any new groudside reports.”

“Please do.” I leave the bridge and return to my quarters to work on my research projects, going through the different permutations my research module has come up with and building out prototypes for testing.

Meanwhile one of my minds reads through old data, looking for inspiration. During this current conflict we’ve been having logistical snarls, come up against the limitations of the chimera chassis, and suffered communication lag.

While Bola’s neutrino vox may one day fix many of our communication woes, I need an immediate solution. Even if it is one day surpassed, it will still be a decent backup. As data is a type of cargo, I turn once again to my engineering grade cargo container STC and look for courier vehicles.

It took me some time to recognise the theme, but I’ve noticed that the the cargo container STC favours biomimicry and biomechanical constructs, like the whale servitor stealth submarine I used to scout out the tau base, or the fat-bellied, mantaray-like appearance of the D-POTs.

Almost all of the designs lack weapons too, even if they usually have hardpoints that can attach a variety of extras, such as weapons or manipulators, these extras aren’t in the STC. The only weapons I’ve found on it are the plasma macro-cannons and CWIS laser defence grid that came with the origami pattern mobile shipyard, as well as an array of E-WAR and countermeasures.

The selection of courier vehicles are no different, with courier vehicles ranging from tiny dragonfly drones, to giant spiders that skate across both ground and water like  a water boatman, to invisible mechanical owls that can flit through the air, or skim just above the ground in utter silence.

There’s also a small selection of more conventional vehicles, with a single example in each category like an all terrain, six wheeled buggy, an air car, hoverbike, and a foldable bicycle. These come across as reference samples rather than serious designs, though they still have everything you need to create them and knowledge to design new ones along a more conventional theme.

After looking through the designs, I choose a large, mechanical owl. I don’t have any stealth vehicles, and it’s a chassis I can repurpose to other roles should I so wish. They’re big enough for a single person to lie inside the chest cavity. Most of their internal space is filled with a power plant and data storage.

Each dull red feather naturally bends light around it. You actually have to run a current through the feathers to reverse the effect so you can assemble the exotic vehicle, or not walk into it when it’s parked, as it won’t show up on the electromagnetic spectrum at all. The only way to detect the mechanical owl is from the air it displaces when in motion, or the ripples in a planet’s magnetosphere caused by the anti-grav technology that helps keep the owl aloft when travelling at low speeds.

Because they can fly so low to the ground, almost like a jetbike, the mechanical owls should be able to avoid the worst of the weather like the D-POTs do and avoid being grounded. I am not entirely happy with how difficult they are to manufacture though as each one will tie up a micro-factory for a month, so I also pick an all terrain motorbike as well.

The motorbike has a fully enclosed seat and extra wide tyres that will be much easier to spread among the stellar corps for general use, and unlike the space marine design I have, usable by normal humans. The bikes won’t require the establishment of another experimental company or specialised training, and are simple enough that I can use a more traditional manufacturing line. Sure it takes up more space and requires large amounts of skilled labour, but it is faster and less energy intensive to manufacture and maintain.

Between the two designs, I should have no difficulty in transporting battlefield data and orders when there is no interference and I don’t have hardlines available.

I promptly delegate the work to my artisans and fabricators and give them two weeks to bring me a prototype of the all terrain motorbike. The owls will take much longer as the microfactories take considerable time and expertise to reconfigure.

Next I turn my mind to looking for a better tank-like chassis, but my STC doesn’t have an appropriate tracked vehicle so I turn Maeve’s request into a research bounty and let my tech-adepts and priests have a go as I am still busy with the Marwolv lasgun. For the stellar corps, I will likely transition everything to rhino chassis from the space marine wargear STC that I transcribed, though I may tweak it a little.

However, that still leaves the PDF high and dry with an overloaded design for their tanks and now I’ve invested so much into Marwolv, I want to see if there are better options.

Last, I turn my attention to military logistics, because no matter how multi-purpose the D-POTs are, they are an orbital shuttle, not a military cargo plane, or truck. Fortunately, I have the right STC for the job and I am overwhelmed with options.

The first design that jumps out at me is a macro-vehicle, a tracked land crawler four hundred metres long and one hundred metres wide that can transport just about anything across solid and semi-solid terrain. You can even link multiple macro-crawlers up into an oversized train, or travel across the sea floor.

This isn’t what I’m looking for right now, but it’s the only tracked vehicle on my STC database and if I ever need a moving fortress, or mass transport on a zero infrastructure planet, it will give me an excellent starting point.

Next is a scaled, slithering land wyrm that burrows underground and surfaces to scavenge burnt out vehicles, radioactive waste, and shattered fortifications, then turns them into manufacturing feedstock, vehicle parts, or ammunition. It can turn corpses into food too.

It’s rather large and has a lot of smaller helper drones that help gather materials, which it can also manufacture from junk, so it doesn’t have to risk itself most of the time, unless you need something capable of swallowing a titan.

You can’t shove a quarter kilometre snek through the earth without consequences though and it tends to destabilise the ground, causing landslides, sinkholes, and earthquakes.

Like the macro-crawler, I’d love one just for the bragging rights, but no matter how brilliant it is, it isn’t what I’m looking for as the stellar corps isn’t cut off from supplies, just inconvenienced. It does have two relevant features, however: it will be useful in post war clean up as its hazardous waste disposal should be able to remove orc spores from the water and soil and turn their bodies into emergency rations.

Its second essential feature lies in its burrowing drones that transport material and parts as these smaller worms can burrow through the earth and pop up to resupply vehicle crews with fuel and ammunition, and with a few small modifications to my current vehicles, can feed their shells directly into a vehicle’s autoloader. If necessary, there are also configurations to carry other types of cargo too.

This is great, because no matter how terrible the ground gets, or how awful the weather is, the wyrm drones can always supply the stellar corps and PDF. I can build them without the land wyrm and deploy them much faster, though it will have to wait until my bikes are made as I don’t have enough spare capacity as most of it is dedicated to building the algae vats and material processing for soylent viridans.

The last stand out design is a cargo loader, a bipedal walker comparable in size to a tau battle suit. It looks remarkably similar to a penitent engine used by the sisters of battle. Rather than crucify the pilot and leave them open to enemy fire, the cargo loader has a properly sealed cockpit and its arms have two pronged clamps, rather than guns. The frame is properly armoured too so anyone standing near it won’t get their limbs caught in the servos and hydraulics.

There are many places where such a machine will be useful, but that isn’t what brings a smile to my face, it’s the science and engineering within the STC. With the knowledge within, combined with the space marine STC and the STC for Distant Sun’s command throne, I believe I can repair those three imperial knights I have hanging around and maybe, just maybe, reverse engineer them too.