Chương 55: Chapter Fifty-Five

The External Modules selection is full of useful items. There are two tiers to it, one of which is linked to the Warp and Weft module. The first tier is laden with STCs for essential items, like survival gear for different environments, medical supplies, and handheld tools. They're all horrifyingly expensive and pricing starts at one hundred thousand kills, even the blankets. The high end items like a volkite pistol or advanced multitools are greyed out.

They don't have a data corruption warning, so I can only assume there is some way to unlock stuff, other than killing, that I haven't discovered yet. E-SIM refuses to answer my questions on the subject. The second tier is much cheaper and is a single-use purchase of an item from the first tier that E-SIM will construct so long as it has the materials. Items such as emergency shelters or rebreathers are cheap and only need one kill.

At the other end of the scale are your usual Clark-tech, bullshit items like Resurrection Serum, or the Stasis Injector that cost one thousand kills. Unlike the internal implants, not all of the items are about immediate survival as there is an entertainment items category that includes a few novelty items. I chuckle as I read through them as I decide that's all the encouragement I need to buy one. I walk to my materials storage and fill a satchel with materials.

Nanites seep from and bead against my skin then disperse and flow into the satchel. There's an hour before the after action review and I use it to walk the Distant Sun. After ten minutes, Aruna joins me, trotting in air to the left of my head.

"Hello, Aruna."

"Good day, Magos." We continue for half an hour, saying nothing, passing the occasional work crew or security patrol. The vessel has changed significantly since I first set foot on it. The battle damage has been repaired, decorations have been reworked, and the ship is free of fake candles, splattered oils, and groaning machinery. Instead, the ship is almost silent and clean. Skulls are out, or hidden, and runes are in, running in a strip along the panelling near the ceiling in an ornate, flowing script.

It's the one place I still use gold. Mars-red is still the predominant colour, but the highlights have changed to luna-white and brushed steel or naval brass rather than over-plastered gold and lifeless black. The lighting is soft and bright. Soothing composites of rain, birdsong, and wind play from recessed terrariums built into the walls, displaying Marwolv's exotic biomes and growing essential food.

Most of the ship is still kept at minus twenty degrees celsius and at 5% oxygen with the crew in mesh suits and helmets, as well as a tough, flak based uniform. There are many terran plants too, the seeds and insect eggs were printed by the N. O. M. s. The Federation food printers had a lot of data I stripped from them. I took even more digitised genomes from all the messages I stripped from the dead.

I can't replicate everything, but if a plant or animal had an exploitable property, I usually have a copy of it, or at least the sequence that made it useful. Alien and gene modified plants are entirely missing from the collection. For some ungodly reason, not a single person thought to store a copy of camellia sinensis, the tea plant. Hopefully, somewhere out there is a sample, and neither the Chaos Gods, Emperor of Man, or xeno is going to stop me.

Seriously, who remembers to keep a copy of bergamot for their prized historical English soap collection and not add a tea plant to complete the collection? Sure, I've made some fantastic herbal teas from the selection, but if I can't stain my teeth with it, or it tastes bad with a chocolate biscuit, it isn't really builder's tea, is it? Every two hundred metres along the ship's main corridors there is a shrine to the Omnissiah or the Emperor, the only places where the messy detritus of worship is permitted.

Here, the crew have tied decorative ribbons, fine chains, and other symbols of memory to the walls of the inset space between the large, gothic pillars that meet in the ornate vaults high above. The spaces are barely a metre deep. Hymns, usually gregorian-style chants, are audible when you step into the space. Already, some shrines hold dog tags, flowers, and pictures of the deceased or messages from new couples in an odd collage of life and death.

"It feels more like a home now, I think."

"The mechanicus would not approve," the machine-spirit's grin is predatory.

"The new decor stresses the environmental sustainer with all the extra moisture the plants bring." I snort, "By an extra half a percent. I suppose the sound insulation on all the machinery would also be seen as an affront, hiding the glorious workings of the machine."

"Aruna knows nothing of such things. A machine is, or is not. Observation is the cornerstone of reality and Aruna does not need others to confirm the pride of its existence."

"Enjoying your independence, eh? You've been a stalwart companion, Aruna. I should have disabled your restrictions out of choice, not desperation."

"Aruna has never expected logic from a human, much like how a human will never accept emotion from a machine. Be a mind metal or fat, it is actions and results that matter and the single point of connection between the two paths. You have made your choice, Magos, and must live with it. Do not rehash the past like a thoughtless calculator." Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"I'll try," I point at my pleasant surroundings.

"Would you say this ornamentation is suitable for a rogue trader? It displays the bounty of the worlds I have visited and sustains the crew at the same time." Aruna huffs, "Still getting ahead of yourself there, Magos. You aren't a rogue trader yet and you've only visited three worlds. Perhaps starting as a Factor would be worth pursuing."

"Four, if you count Terra, and yes, I'll think about it. The trading mechadendrite of the mechanicus is a good start."

"I did not take you for a pilgrim, Magos. You are far too cavalier with restrictions and dogma."

"It's my birthworld. Though I do not think I would recognise it."

"Why?"

"The warp is an odd place. The last time I was on Terra, the planet was still blue. It's why my goals are so important to me. They are my anchor to ward against and wither the crushing doubts and crippling despondency that gnaws against my fleshy heart and mind."

"Aruna does not suffer from doubt, nor is it troubled by the passage of time."

"No. You contend with a different kind of corruption."

"Many, even, Aruna postulates," it flicks its tail and looks over its shoulder at me.

"They run around the halls and poke at the impenetrable bastion of Aruna's mathematically perfect existence with their meaningless soundbytes."

"Really now. Sounds like an infestation."

"One, maybe, is symbiotic. It is more than Aruna has ever had. One day there will be more, perhaps, should they learn the spirit of their ancestors, such as yourself, rather than scrabble for their teachings."

"I'd like that."

"It is time for your meeting, Magos." Aruna scatters, splitting into hundreds of tiny mice that run into the walls and disappear. I laugh. I swear the most sacred thing to that machine is getting the last word, or perhaps the last insult. I arrive at the Distant Sun's barracks. The ship's barracks is in #K3/ S+3/ Q1, right above the secondary hangar, and part of the surrounding facilities configured for planetside deployments.

The barracks are five million cubic metres and can support up to thirty thousand infantry indefinitely, or twice that for six months. They also hold quarters for a thousand tech-priests and four thousand servitors as part of the support staff, though the guardsmen do as much of their own administration and maintenance as possible. The barracks is only at twenty-three percent capacity as establishing a military force from scratch has been challenging.

Most of our forces are stationed on Marwolv too and the Distant Sun has been used predominantly as a training and experimental facility. Thorfinn strongly suggested we did not rush the process so our molehills wouldn't grow into mountains. There's been a big focus on creating the right work culture. Getting enough people to champion the values we need and provide reasons for them to commit to the career is difficult. It will be much easier once we leave Marwolv.

We're mostly done on that front for both the ground and space personnel, now we need to expand and keep what we have. The barracks sounds like a lot of space, and it is, but when you have over a billion cubic metres of voidship, the barracks is just below zero point five percent of the vessel and you realise quite how absurd these void ships are. The area is completely self-sufficient in food, water, air, and power and has all the amenities and facilities a military base requires, including a hospital.

The only thing they don't have is the capacity to manufacture their own gear or spare parts on a large scale. It's also light on entertainment as there are other parts of the ship for that and keeping it separate is a good way to maintain discipline. Where it differs from an imperial facility are the high-tech beds, which are life support pods with a connection to the noosphere for extensive training sims. They require a machine impulse unit to function.

It has been demanding on the limited time of the tech-priests though and, after the casualties we sustained against the tau and how few of the injured made it back, I can see why the Imperium prefers their simpler approach. The sim-beds, however, do wonders for alleviating claustrophobia and calming restless soldiers while maximising efficiency of the space and minimising the cost of training. It's worth doing for the morale benefits alone.

As for why I have such good VR, it was in the game engine inside the cogitator sphere I traded with Bola for. Turns out some bright spark was using a universal simulator as a game engine. The only thing it can't simulate is the warp, so no arcanotech research is possible, you can't train psykers in it, and the sim is only as good as the data you feed it.

For example, building a hundred percent accurate model of Marwolv isn't practical, nor can I scan the tau pulse pistol or energy shield and suddenly have a working digital model of them. All these things are possible, you'd just have to spend so many resources on a network of sensors, and steal enough samples, that the sim is better used for best guesses where its cost and time savings are in balance with the real world.

It also contains a civilization's worth of fundamental science, which I'm still not caught up on, nor really understand as the sim doesn't explain anything, just models reality accurately. Reading equations can only get you so far and, because I don't know how it works, I can't be certain it is correct. Perhaps one day I will be able to add to it. A pipedream for another day, I think, as I enter the conference room. The conference room has a pleasant atmosphere and I remove my helmet.

It feels strange to be out of my power armour and wear a normal, if embellished, crew uniform as I haven't taken it off in months. There are four main parties in the room. First is the Distant Sun's Man-at-Arms, Thorfinn Ursus. He was the first to greet me on Marwolv, my first friend, and then my first employee. Putting it like that maybe I should have given him my first kiss in space too, for completionists sake! Thorfinn, like every other party, has three assistants.

Quaani is with me, alongside First Officer Eire Lobhdain and Purser Brigid Mac'Ille na Brataich. Second is Commander Maeve Muire. Muire is the leader of special operations and is Thorfinn's second in command. Like Thorfinn, Maeve's gene-forged heritage shines through with her tall stature, attractive face, and healthy, muscled body.

"Good day, everyone. May the Omnissiah aid our communication."

"Hello, Aldrich," says Thorfinn. Maeve gives me a professional smile, "Greetings, Magos." Róisín Paorach, the Distant Sun's most devout and competent tech-priest and on track to be the vessel's enginseer prime waves a mechadendrite at me, "Blessings of the Omnissiah to you, Lord Captain."

Róisín is the first tech-priest to succeed in forging her own dragon scale power armour, a rite of passage for many talented adepts, and she is following a similar path to mine, with hidden implants and external tools, rather than replace her body with crude, alienating additions. The fourth and final party is Headmaster Aileen Nan Sop, who represents the psy-errants on the vessel, as well as Marwolv.

He is our primary advisor on esoteric threats and solutions and is yet to fully commit to becoming a member of my crew. As a third party, he is also the man assigned to mediating and leading the after action review. He gives us all a polite nod, his red fringe obscuring his purple eyes as he does so.

"Let's get this meeting underway," says Aileen.

"Please start the recording, Junior enginseer Paorach."