40 Thousand Reasons

Chapter 173: Headache

Travelling out of Warp had many advantages, but the most important right now was the ability to stop at every interesting place on our way, for example rich asteroid fields or Ork infested systems, where I could loot everything of value.

And since our course towards Agripinaa took us right by Forge World Voss, it was a great opportunity for more trade, the Lancefire variant. STC templates and blackstone, plus Ork ships filled with precious minerals and xeno weapons.

I even met another Rogue Trader named Saorise_Romalla here, and arranged a new alliance. For her I had a different task, exploring the Tau space and the newly reverted worlds of the Hadex Anomaly.

She would need Blanks and armed forces to conquer that sector and the thousands of livable planets it was certain to have.

And as it happened, I did have enough pull with the Voss Forge_World to arrange for a dozen Catachan regiments and their transport spaceships to be 'permanently detached' to Trader Romalla and her new exploration mission in the Eastern Fringe.

The rest of the Favor, I traded it for more Tarantula turrets, thousands of light vehicles and nearly all their stock of ammunition. From bolter rounds to grenades and missiles to more Nova Shells and torpedoes of every kind.

Lady Saorise would need to stay and upgrade the troops to Lancefire standards, meaning improved Ragnarok tanks and Armed Sentinel walkers, plus warpless engines and a Nova Cannon for her cruiser.

With two armor regiments and ten of heavy infantry, my new ally should have a good chance at pacifying most of that sector. Plus, it would be the nearby Machine Forge to supply and repair there for free.

More Rogue Traders will be needed there, as the closing of the Anomaly had unintended consequences, allow xeno empires to expand into the rich and unexplored region, including the Tau and the Demiurg.

A billion new stars were now available for conquest as the star lanes cleared, and I wanted all of them for humanity.

Sure, you could stand on any planet in the galaxy and look at the sky, and see the Imperium of Man spread all over the galaxy. But that reality was also false. The Imperium was thin beyond belief, and Ork Worlds and Necron Tomb Worlds outnumbered the human worlds ten to one.

Unexplored worlds outnumbered known worlds a thousand to one, with most of those 'known' worlds being hidden from the Imperium by Navigator Houses, rapacious Rogue Traders or Astra Telepathica relays and support stations, plus Mechanicus research and mining worlds. I know, because I was hiding thousands of worlds myself, after all.

Even the Solar Segmentum itself was poorly colonized and explored, billions of star systems still awaiting discovery due to turbulent Warp currents and Warp Storms.

It wasn't yet time for a concerted human galactic conquest, but that time will come.

Primarch Guilliman was already calling for an 'Indomitus Crusade', meant to unite the Imperium again and re-conquer all the lost worlds.

Merely tens of thousand of worlds and it was already a gigantic effort, even for a galactic-scale empire.

A month later, my fleet arrived at Forge World Agripinaa ready for battle. However, the system was oddly quiet. Not even a hint of a Chaos incursion, which was great but also worrisome.

I was certain I recalled an attack by the World Eaters should happen about now, and I hoped to arrive by surprise and demolish that invasion.

Nevermind then. This Forge had STC patterns for a special type of tank cannon mounted on the Leman_Russ_Eradicator variant. A miniature Nova Cannon, firing miniature Nova Shells.

I wanted that cannon for my forces, and thus began a long trading session with a suspicious Fabricator and his Conclave Cohort, a dozen high-ranking techpriests with different specializations.

Luckily, I had Inquisitor Vail on my side, to help smooth out various legal problems and religious conflicts.

Plus I did bring megatonnes of gifts, and plenty of work contracts.

It took us three months to finalize the technology transfer deal, in the shape of a hundred Leman Russ turrets with the Eradicator cannon mounted on a Ragnarok chassis, plus a complete copy of the original STC template.

Of course, a better tank cannon was good in itself, even if the effective range was quite small, but that wasn't my purpose here.

If a battleship-grade cannon could be miniaturized into a mere tank gun, then further miniaturization would be easy enough for a certain kind of orange primates.

Can you imagine bolt pistols firing tiny Nova Shells? Or rotary bolter guns firing thousands of them per minute?

I wanted that for my troops, to replace the regular bolter rounds with something a dozen times stronger, that would simply disintegrate any enemy armored infantry in a single shot. For example Chaos marines or Tau armor suits, not to mention Necron Warriors or Tyranid organisms.

My own Jokaero smith was busy with the Dark Eldar blaster pistol, also known as the Chekhov Gun. Trying to integrate it with a 'regular' Hellgun pistol of Imperium tech, for ease of maintenance and recharge, plus the obvious advantage of looking nearly harmless and shooting battleship-grade darklight beams.

My forces had been completely resupplied and trained by this point, and I was starting to search for another destination when the Warp split open to reveal the invaders.

Only it wasn't merely a Chaos Fleet of World Eaters. Night Lords, Black Legion, Thousand Sons and Death Guard plus a trillion demons and a couple of corrupted Glorianna Battleships the Conqueror and the Nightfall, going by the Machine Spirit's identification codes. And beside them, a horde of Dark Mechanicus ships and Daemon Engines.

Sadly no Primarchs this time, nor a certain Ahriman.

"Fleet wide, all sensors on autistic mode. Agripinaa, power up all Gellar fields now!" I commanded, as I sunk into my seat and the Tesseract vision.

A good part of the Chaos Fleet was somehow protected against teleport and dimensional displacement, including all the Dark Forge Temporia's capital ships. A veil of purple shields covered those ships in impenetrable dimensional fields, as were the Gloriannas and a dozen Chaos barges and battleships.

Very clever on their part, somehow figuring out a way to protect themselves from my cheating weapon.

Then again, Dark Mechanicus had no compulsion from inventing new devices, and nobody to investigate them for heresy.

We would have to slug it out with the bigger ships, not that it worried me in the least.

The Black Lament unleashed the initial Nova Cannons salvo among the thousand of escort ships, and I displaced a dozen more Nova mines at key locations, exterminating nearly all Hell Talon starfighters and billions of flying demons.

"Contact above, Captain. Eldar fleet!" my daughter Pauline exclaimed in surprise.

I saw them a second before, as the Necron tesseract did not need to receive gravimetric sensor readings.

"Ignore them for now. All fighters and corvettes disperse in Beta pattern. Cruisers flank left and protect the planet. Battlecruisers and barges form on the right, battleships advance beside the Fortress." I ordered out loud, while sending the exact vectors to my fleet.

They were flying nearly blind now, so every course correction and decelerating maneuver would have to depend on my second sight for accuracy.

Unlike Tyranids, the Chaos traitors would have advanced Machine Spirits and auspex sensors as well, even inhabited by demons.

As expected, the capital Chaos ships kept on course, heading relentlessly towards the Forge World and firing their capital grade weaponry towards the planet. And since a planet could not change trajectory and speed on its fixed orbit, it might as well be a stationary target.

Macrocannon shells, plasma bolts and lances and torpedoes streaked across the void to impact the planet's surface, causing a thousand new craters on the already pockmarked world. Forge Agripinaa was close to the Eye of Terror, and had been attacked many times in the past, and thus it was also known as the Orb of a Thousand Scars. Two thousands scars now, but who's counting?

Assault shuttles and heavy landers followed, filled to the brim with cultists, traitor marines and distorted tanks and corrupted Titans. A textbook planetary invasion, which might have worked except for a tiny out of context problem. Me.

The cruisers fired their own Nova Cannons at the invading army, and I added my own store of Nova mines and the expensive invasion force was destroyed before it could enter the polluted atmosphere.

It was likely this wasn't all their forces, but they would have that many shuttles and landers remaining now.

A planetary invasion depended on three factors for success. Orbital superiority or at least contested space in orbit. Secondly, space and air cover for the landing troops usually achieved by heavy fighter escort and orbital bombardment of air defenses.

And thirdly, a constant stream of landers and shuttles to provide troops and logistic supplies on the ground.

Tyranids and Chaos had a distinct advantage with winged space fliers, but landers were a different issue. I must have killed three thousand Chaos marines just from this minute long engagement, and I had enough Nova Shells to fight a Tyranid Fleet.

"Carrier Icarus is being hit by some kind...and it's gone." my XO muttered in disbelief.

I narrowed my eyes in near anger. Sure, a converted mass-conveyor wasn't a real warship, and void shields were little defense against gravity lances, but that strike was too sudden. I only managed to grab the bridge crew before the entire carrier crumpled like a paper bag.

"Let's return the favor then." I muttered in a cold voice and inserted my right hand into the Blackstone Fortress's command holofield.

The Machine Spirit parsed my demand at the speed of thought, and opened the controls of the Immaterium beam.

'Target that Ark Mechanicus!' I urged the Spirit, and willed it to fire.

Whatever defense the Dark Mechanicus had on their battleship could not withstand the Blackstone Fortress for more than a few seconds, and then the death beam just sliced through, killing everything on board, from heretek techpriests to infested logis-engines and demonic cogitators.

I felt my own stomach try to explode out through my throat, and fought that impulse for a long minute.

Meanwhile, the battle continued without my supervision, corvettes firing torpedoes and capital ships pounding at each other with all their batteries.

Hordes of demons were being mowed and splattered by our point-defense turrets, while the Aquila interceptors and Fury starfighters engaged bombers and enemy torpedoes.

"What's wrong, Lord Pef?" I heard Amberley ask in a concerned voice to my side.

"The backlash of that weapon is very strong. I guess we won't be using that again." I grumbled as I tried to clear my head.

"... At least that heretek ship is dead in space now." the blonde Inquisitor whispered to herself, just as my Black Lament fired the Nova Cannons again.

I fired everything at the two Gloriannas, blowing out the prow of the first and the superstructure of the second. Tough old bastards, both of them.

"Torpedo impact in two seconds! One...and the Conqueror is gone too." Pauline exclaimed from the augury station, sounding proud.

I sighed inward and leaned back in my chair. A hundred more capital ships to kill, plus a trillion demons. A long day ahead, and my headache was getting worse.