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2020/06/02 11:09:21
Subject: The Great Crusade, Warp travel, command structure and how time works
locarno24 wrote: Archeotech drives and first-class navigators can jump right into orbit if it really, really matters, which can save days or weeks of realspace flight.
Spoiler:
Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work wrote:
Qvo-87 stopped speaking. His head cocked on his banded augmetic neck. ‘Report interrupt. Forgive me. Wait…’ he said. His voice took on a more human tone.
From the partially restored desks of machinery, an alarm set up.
Daelus sauntered over to a console and glanced at a display. ‘Etheric monitor. Something’s coming in, something big.’ He looked more closely. ‘Throne of Terra, something extremely big!’
Micro tremors shook the station. A spanner crawled across a work bench. It skittered across the surface and dropped with a clang to the floor.
Felix stared at the rattling tool. His face betrayed his irritation.
‘Stand ready,’ said Felix. He grasped a railing and set his feet wide.
‘He’s not going to do it, is he?’ Daelus asked Troncus.
Troncus shrugged.
‘Lord Felix?’ Daelus said.
‘He will do it,’ said Felix.
‘Honoured tetrarch, would you expect anything less from the archmagos dominus?’ said Qvo-87.
‘Rash as always,’ said Felix. ‘Cawl may style himself the saviour of the Imperium, but his grandstanding puts us all at risk.’
‘The archmagos dominus?’ said Thracian. ‘He is coming?’
All over the command deck loose items bounced across the metal.
‘Brace yourselves, all of you,’ ordered Felix.
‘What is happening?’ Thracian demanded.
‘The archmagos approaches,’ said Qvo-87 with an apologetic smile.
‘Cawl is attempting an in-system real space translation,’ said Felix. ‘Here. By the station.’
‘That’s insane,’ said Thracian.
‘Many and glorious are the technologies of the Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl. All will be well, you shall see,’ said Qvo-87 with a zealot’s fervour.
The alarms shrieked. Servitors all around the bridge went into emergency shutdown. Purple sparks leapt over the exposed metal deck, and a throbbing roar built throughout the station’s fabric.
‘Throne!’ shouted Thracian. ‘He is coming in right by us!’
‘All will be well!’ repeated Qvo-87.
Gravity ceased to obey natural law. Tools floated upwards. Through the field-sealed rent in the hull, Felix watched the sky fill with the curdled oil colours of imminent warp breach.
The void tore. Wicked lights scorched his eyes. He tasted bitterness, exultation and the distillation of regret. A torrent of pleading voices flooded his mind.
With a great, flat flash of lightning, a gargantuan ship appeared by the Aegida. Black fire flickered around its outline. Corposant streamed off its every angle. Then the warp breach collapsed in on itself. Tools clattered down. The hideous babbling ceased. All returned to normal. A lone alarm pinged over and over again. Felix relaxed his white-knuckle grip.
Qvo’s augmetics flashed, setting the servitors back into motion. The men-machines continued exactly where they had left off, as if nothing had happened.
A vast red craft occupied the space between the Aegidan platform and the surface of ravaged Sotha. It was a vessel like no other, one of the rare Ark Mechanicus explorator vessels, and even among those behemoths it was reckoned large for its kind, a vast city in space, bristling with weapons, and containing manufacturing and research laboratoria beneath its adamantium skin to rival a forge world.
Felix knew it only too well, having spent the best part of ten millennia imprisoned inside its holds.
A legend emblazoned in lingua-technis hierofont proudly proclaimed its name.
Zar Quaesitor.
The ship, home and research facility of Belisarius Cawl.
