Chương 152: Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Two

"Footfall," says Thorfinn, "Is the weirdest voidstation we visited in our travels. It's the first stop rimward of the Maw, the big warp storm that almost completely separates the Koronus Expanse from the Calixis Sector. Like the Ship Breaker Yards, it's a bunch of asteroids all chained together, though many of the chain links are the same size as Sword Frigate, so the style is different.

"All the asteroids surround a huge statue of the Emperor, about eighty kilometres high, put in place by the station's founder Parsimus Derwin, in 410. M41. The asteroids, however, are bizarre. Many have been carved into fanciful buildings that would look more at home planetside, whereas others take the opposite approach and would be entirely untenable in a higher gravity.

"Most are connected not just through vast chains, but also fully enclosed ornate bridges that are also full buildings too, as opposed to the leaking corridors of the Breaking Yards. The whole station is more like an oceanic city, floating in space, than a coherent voidstation, all lit up by the fiery orange glare of Furibundus, the local star."

Thorfinn projects some scans in the centre of the table and starts pointing out specific buildings, "Only a few buildings have artificial gravity and are fought over on a daily basis, but a few of them are special and home to major factions that no one wants to mess with, like the shield shrines of the Mechanicus that protect the whole station, or the Red Schola that holds the slaves and overseers of the Tutors, a secretive cabal of slave masters.

"There are ten of these special locations, but the one that's the most controversial of them all is the Xenosium. It resembles a brutalist style fortress-prison and is a mix between an embassy and a hotel for xenos who dare to visit Footfall. Now usually, it's pretty empty, but while we were there, a cult of Rogue Psykers took it over for their base and no one wanted to deal with them.

"We took the job. Quaani led the way, which was horribly risky, but he's the best psyker we had on board and the two psy-errants who accompanied him wouldn't have been enough on their own to protect us as we had to split into as many groups as possible to hunt them down.

"It was laughably easy. They weren't prepared for Vanguard armour, Cyber Mastiffs, and the huge array of other well trained forces that we had. The excursion established us as a minor faction on the station and got us a favour with Tanthus Moross, the station administrator, who was the one who filled us in on what kind of trades we should be aiming for.

He also gave us the contacts for all the different employment agencies on Footfall, which is how we managed to recruit so many people to make up for the predicted shortfall in personnel." Thorfinn leans back in his chair and stares out at the stars for a moment, "That's where it all started to go wrong, I think." Thorfinn looks back at me, "You remember my reasons for leaving in the first place? To make documentaries and prepare the Fleet for culture shock?"

"Yeah, I remember," I say.

"Well, it turns out that culture shock also works the other way around."

"In what way?" says Eire. Brigid places her elbows on the table and leans towards Thorfinn. Thorfinn shifts in his seat looking a bit uncomfortable from Brigid's, bird-like stare. He glances at me and I smirk. Thorfinn shakes his head and groans. He runs his hand down his face. I tap Brigid on the shoulder and she startles.

"Ease up love," I say.

"Sorry, Thorfinn," says Brigid, looking a little embarrassed.

"Right, well. Culture shock. We offered good pay, good food, and an education. That turned out to be a mistake. Almost no one who had served on a vessel before believed us, so we only picked up the most desperate individuals, and hardly any veterans.

"It was OK, at first. We fed, and clothed, and fixed them. Then began the classes. Basic stuff, like how to read, write, and count. Most were adults, so they struggled a bit at first, to learn new things. Even the idea of learning was alien to most of them. We also started running them through emergency drills, and teaching them what counted as a crime, and what did not.

"Problem was, these people were just too used to using violence to get what they want, or keep what they have. It took us four months to bring on enough people, stuffing Distant Sun and Torchbearer with as many people as we could support.

"By that point, word was spreading that we weren't full of shit and we started getting the attraction of the gangs and other factions who kept trying to stuff informants among the new recruits. We did our best, but I doubt we got them all. Lord Beryllium, the Machine-Spirit for Erudition's Howl, is particularly fond of uncovering spies and took it upon itself to hunt them down, even on other vessels.

Hopefully exposure to the Melodium over the last ten years and good treatment has turned the ones we didn't catch, but we can't know for sure.

"Quaani and I decided to skedaddle from Footfall before we could get into any further trouble and we left for Damaris after they chartered us to ship goods for them. Damaris is a well fortified, civilised world. Once we left Footfall, a lot of the new recruits tried throwing their weight around. It didn't go well for them because absolutely everyone is trained as a Herald and is quite enhanced. All of a sudden, we had six penal regiments." I inhale sharply.

"Regiments, not companies?"

"Yeah. These people, they just couldn't learn that murder, rape, and theft was a bad idea." The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"That's awful," says Brigid.

"There's no way you could have sustained that many useless mouths or afforded the bill to put them in stasis though."

"You see straight to the heart of the matter," says Thorfinn.

"When I say 'these people' what I mean is about sixty percent of them. There were plenty who were smart, and grateful, and quick to adapt, but yeah, one hundred and eighty thousand barely trained louts wasn't really something we could keep."

"So you arrived at Damaris with all these people you wanted to get rid off," says Brigid.

"What did you do, Thorfinn?"

"The worst of them were converted into Kataphrons. Thirty thousand or so. Those we kept. The rest were traded with the Damaris monitor fleet. They were quite keen to have a bunch of unruly fodder they could throw at pirates and other nuisances.

"They had a mothballed Slaughter-Class cruiser from M34 that they were using for spare parts. Thanks to Aldrich's records, we were able to identify that the cruiser had a near unique engine modification called Scartix Engine Coils, that can give up to a twenty-five percent boost in acceleration. It also had a couple of other archeotech devices, like Gravitic Accelerators, for strike craft, and a Contra-Grav Maneuver Drive, that supplements acceleration and manoeuvres.

The drive is especially effective near planets and other massive bodies so you can use it to fly much closer to a planet, or within the thicker layers of a gas giant.

"No one knew what they were, and thought they were broken junk, so we nabbed them in exchange for a hundred and twenty thousand class two and three criminals with just enough skills not to kill themselves when living aboard a void ship. Never have I been more ashamed or pleased with myself simultaneously." Thorfinn watches our faces and continues, "I know that slavery is outlawed in the Stellar Fleet, but so is executing criminals who haven't reached the threshold. Quaani and I had a choice.

We could risk the whole fleet with mutinies or power shortages, or hand off the criminals to someone who would use them like we would have done in exchange for scavenging vital archeotech that we have a fair chance at replicating."

"What a fucking mess," I say.

"It wasn't officially slavery. They will likely never get a chance at redemption though like they would with us, so it is slavery in practice. That's on the other party's head though, not yours Thorfinn. Handing off prisoners to another Imperial authority in exchange for resources is a reasonable course of action and perfectly legal within the eyes of the Imperium. We might try to hold ourselves to a higher standard, for both moral and practical reasons, but some situations just don't give us many options."

Thorfinn says, "That sounds pretty and all, but we repeated the same process at Damaris. This time they were mostly Drusian Cultists that we were employed to take to Ntharis. Lord Captain Sargon obliterated one of Ntharis' continents by triggering his warp drive too close to the planet and they needed more settlers. It wasn't quite so bad the second time as we were able to recruit from the cultists by tempting them to stay with us with our good hospitality.

That let us observe and approach the individuals who would be the best fit. We still ended up with another penal regiment at the end of it though. The colonists didn't take well to Warp travel and many went quite mad."

"Do we still have the penal regiment?"

"Yeah, it's secured within Torchbearer. They haven't been enhanced like the Heralds are, nor do they get our best equipment, but they've still been training and running simulations for the last decade. I'd put them on par with an elite, if rather green Imperial Guard regiment."

"Well," I say.

"At least we'll have something to throw at the next two or three engagements that the Bargest Chapter will lead us into. Will they integrate into the Fleet proper without trouble once they've performed their obligatory high casualty missions?" Thorfinn says, "They should do. They're highly disciplined now and have adjusted to life in the Stellar Fleet. They're also a lot smarter and more knowledgeable, so they actually understand what they're risking and what they seek to gain.

A pretty enthusiastic bunch to be honest."

"That's a relief," says Brigid.

"Sure is," says Thorfinn.

"So we're nearing the end now. After Ntharis we left the trade lanes and cut across the Unbeholden Reaches, skipped past Hemelshot as it's far too risky to visit, and ended up back at Cobalt. From there we returned along our previous route to Acheron. We could have made the whole trip in a few months, but with you so distant, we really took our time to map out all the unoccupied systems along the way."

"Hold up," says Eire.

"What was Ntharis like?"

"It's an independent agri world that the Olivares and Saul dynasties have seized a few cities on. Problem is most of the locals worship dark gods so it gets a lot of Chaos incursions. Not only that, but the whole planet is covered in a toxic orange smog from all the pesticides and other chemicals the Mechanicus use to grow endless fields of corn.

"There are no mountains, and no oceans, only carefully controlled weather by the satellites in space. Macro-harvesters on par with our Land Crawler trundle over the artificially flattened landscape, harvesting, processing, and sowing new corn into the dust that they call soil and churning out dry, bland biscuits. Trudging alongside them are whole armies of servitors that assist with the planting and processing.

"No insects buzz, goats bleat, or birds chirp. The whole planet is completely sterile. It's a shithole, basically, just like everywhere else. How they've sustained the same crop for millennia, despite the complete ecological collapse is a complete mystery to me."

"Did you stock up on rations?" I say.

"Only after extensive testing, but yes, we did. We have a whole megatonne of the stuff," says Thorfinn.

"No one likes the biscuits but they didn't have any contamination, despite the polluted environment, and each biscuit can sustain an active man for a day with all the calories and micronutrients they might need, even if they will feel horribly hungry. They're similar to freeze dried soylent viridans, as inedible as they are imperishable. They'll crack your teeth, if you're not careful.

"Fortunately the chefs have worked out how to use them as a thickener in stews and sauces, or turn them into soup and porridge. They let us stretch our supplies and serve more proper meals than we could before. At the portions we use them for, there's enough to bulk out meals every day for a million people for at least a hundred and thirty six years, or half that if we start eating them straight from the packet in an emergency."

"That's remarkable," says Eire.

"I know I spend all day working with big numbers, but they never cease to amaze me. What did you trade for it?"

"A promethium NN processing facility and three hundred Leman Russ E. They could only afford the maintenance grade STCs though, so I've no idea if they'll be able to replicate any of our designs." I say, "Ah, I hope it doesn't all go straight into the hands of the cultists. It's such a unique design it could get us in some real trouble if only the Ruinous Powers are seen to be using them." Thorfinn snorts, "Give me some credit. I split the order between the Olivares and Saul dynasties. They teamed up to buy it.

Sure, some tanks will be lost and stolen along the way, but there's only one fuel refinery and someone will steal a few no matter who we sell them to."

"That's a relief," says Brigid.

"Damn right it is. Anyways, that's my tale. Hopefully it won't keep you up at night like it does me."