40 Thousand Reasons

Chapter 10: Pact

Every year, Decima holds another huge ball, and invites the socialites to preen themselves in front their new Governor.

By the fifth year, I am swimming among 50 concubines and even gain a third wife, from a Noble house with roots going to the Age of Strife and beyond.

Serena Rinne-Dolean is red-headed and kinda plump. Now a Lancefire by marriage. She is also about 80 years old, though due to anti-aging treatments she looks about 25. And she will keep looking that age for a millennium or two.

Her family has founded the twin Hive city with same name. One twin is called Rinne and the other Dolean, probably after the original founders. Now the cities are united into a large metropolis with over 1 billion people, although most of those are lower caste workers and servants.

Even outside the Empire, the hierarchies and the mode of operation remains largely similar, due to inertia.

You might change the Governor for a King or Prince, but the pyramidal structure of a Hive city will not change.

And below the factory levels, there's the underhive, a maze of pipes and conduits and sewage plants, all infested by gangs and criminals.

Not as numerous now, due to the Mechanicus tech-priests forcefully recruiting them for other purposes, like agriculture and mining and war.

But, they did find a few Blanks and where there is one there will be more.

A special compound is created for those with the blessing, and a dozen astropaths now scour the Hives for more Blanks.

The original Blanks are not very important by themselves, but they are sent to a remote mountain valley for training and breeding and schooling and other eugenic purposes.

My own kids will join the compound, to reduce the pressure on the Navigator and his astropath choir.

But only when I have to travel. I want to enjoy loving my kids, and nobody is allowed to interfere.

In real space Blanks are mostly harmless, not that Navigators are allowed in my nursery.

I am tempted to create a similar compound for Navigators, but they refuse. Either way, they do come to mingle at the Governor balls and eventually will spread their seed.

Decima has promised large rewards for any woman that manages to seduce a Navigator. Even bridge positions for her kids or similar boons. For a small merchant house it would be huge.

There is also a Navigator lady, but she never leaves her quarters on the Iconoclast destroyer. I suspect she has mutated beyond what's acceptable in society. The Warp just works that way, and flesh is weak.

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An even better reason to want Blanks for officers, as many as possible.

Also, a reason to post armed guards around that Navigator quarters, most of them combat servitors. And a squad of void marines for every other Navigator. Just in case.

By the tenth year, we finally manage to unlock an Atomantic arc-reactor from the Fellblade, and copy the original design. Upgrading the thing will be even harder, as the tech is so advanced and complicated it might as well be magic.

Gyron heads that task, while I focus on the plasma guns from the Stormblade. Again, copying the schematic in original format is possible, but not useful.

Forge world Ryza holds the 'patent' for the original Stormblade, and thus I need something significantly different for my own STC.

A tri-barrel project is possible and will even increase the rate of fire, but it would be unwieldy and cumbersome, as the twin guns are big even so. A single barrel plasma blastgun is better, as I could adapt that for Leman Russ tanks and perhaps even ship-to-ship combat.

Perhaps even for a small Titan...or maybe a Knight. I don't have any of those yet, so it's all theoretical.

But for tanks...it could be similar to the Macharius_Omega, only with much fewer problems.

Time flies, and 8 years later I am finished with this project, the Ilevar plasma gun pattern. Gyron is also finished with a slightly larger but easier to manufacture and maintain arc reactor,

I also have 200 children, and about 30 of them Blanks and ready for service. Not as many as I hoped, but much better than nothing.

The Blank valley has produced 100 more kids, and half of them are Blanks, possibly due to having both parents with the special gene.

All their girls are set aside to become my concubines in the future, while the boys are sent to my new naval officer school.

As officers, they will be given a generous stipend to form their own harems and produce more Blanks for the clan. Like a minor house. It's not exactly eugenics, but works much the same. I know of dog races that have been created using the same methods.

A last Governor ball marks my departure, and luck has it a Navigator finds himself a darling to warm his nights. Navigator genes acquired!

Gyron sets a Magos Biologis on the task of disseminating those genes to willing donors, by surgical implantation.

My eldest son, Primus Victor, accompanies Magos Yulinaz, to maintain a protective anti-psyker field for the security of the surgeries.

Victor also is tasked with finding himself a hundred concubines, with his mother's help. Decima seems rather happy with that task. It will mean grandkids and she can barely wait.

Most of my forces remain home, as defense against another possible invasion, and only the Rainment escorts my cruiser back to Imperial space.

Gyron sends a crew of his tech-priests on board the Lament as it departs for Antax as well.

Then we leave and hope for the best. With 2 frigates and 5 destroyers as a fleet in being, my personal empire should be mostly safe. There are a hundred new PDF regiments guarding the cities now, beside our armor and grenadiers. A thousand more regiments will be trained and equipped over the next decades, but manufacturing laser weapons is slow.

A dozen transport ships loaded with minerals and organics follow my cruiser in a big convoy, with a regiment loaded as protection against boarders of any type.

A couple of weeks later we arrive at Antax.

Did I mention this is the damn Warhammer 40 thousand universe?

A large Ork Waaaagh is assaulting Forge Antax, called Whaaagh! Gutstompa.

The Blood Angels space marines are fighting beside the Mechanicus war engines, tanks and skitarii and Titans.

Luckily, Forge Antax had just produced 100 new corvettes designed by myself, and they help maintain a protective umbrella over the shipyards and Titan manufactoriums.

There is no need for desperate pleas for help. Without Antax I am screwed anyway.

I launch everything I can, fighters and torpedoes, lance batteries fire until their barrels glow red.

I deplete all the missiles and the Rainment get badly damaged by a lucky Ork Kroozer before its luck runs own and eats a salvo of servitor piloted torpedoes.

On the ground I cannot help as much, since my armor is back home, but I use the guards and the void marines to safeguard the orbitals, tech priests leading swarms of combat servitors to cleanse the greenskin infestation from the shipyards and mass elevators.

The multilasers fire rapidly to blow up Ork fighter-bombers, which shouldn't even be able to fly in vacuum with propellers and chemical rockets.

But logic is joke for a big Waaagh, and the Orks don't care anyway. Their contraptions are red, so they fly fast.

My arrival breaks the back of the orbital deadlock, and I manage to destroy three Ork Kroozers before they turn towards me. The Lament cruiser helps as well and cripples a dozen smaller Ork escorts.

The Mechanicus fleet takes advantage and blasts the exposed backside and engines of the Ork ships, then begin launching boarders.

I fly away and wait, since I'm fresh out of boarding units. Out of torpedoes and missiles as well.

In a week, the Waaagh loses most of their naval forces, and a few Kroozers retreat, while a dozen more hulks drift in space, with Mechanicus servitors and tech-priests going over everything for salvage.

A hundred shattered escorts as well, both human and not.

There is enough adamantium and other rare components in these prizes to craft a thousand new ships. Even if the Ork weapons are worthless, they can be studied and then melted and re-forged again.

On the ground, the fighting continues for two more months, as there were a hundred million Orks if not more. Orbital bombardments help, but they have to be restricted in close proximity to forges and factories.

Sadly, 60 corvettes and 20 destroyers have been lost by Antax, about a decade of hard work lost to yet another batch of green mushrooms.

The space marines got away easy, only losing a lander and a dozen brothers. I suspect they were lost to the Black_Rage, more than the Ork weapons.

Still, I will not ask and respect their dead. Without them, the Orks might have gained access to Titans and Titan making facilities. And then things would have been really bad.

Thus, I land for a meeting with the Fabricator General and the Space Marine Captain Donatos_Aphael and offer my support. And then share a dozen gifts equally with both, since we fought together and thus we are bound by blood honor.

The Marine almost refuses, before the Fabricator explains.

"Lord Donatos, such is the way of this Captain Pef Lancefire. Everything he finds out in the wilderness he gives away to the Imperium, mostly to Forge Worlds. We help him in turn with ships and tanks and tech-priests. But as we have fought together..."

The Space Marine towers over me and shakes my hand in thanks. "We cannot produce these STC designs anyway, Lord Pef. Might as well give them to the Tech-priest so that they increase the arsenal of humanity."

I nod slowly. In truth, I don't have anything that could help a Space Marine Chapter. They have the best equipment and priority to replacements.

Still, I do have a wild card. "I understand, Captain. But there is something you do need. The same thing the Fabricator has tasked me with. Blank genes, immune to the Immaterium." I hold my hand out to the tech-priest and he blurs into action, draining me of a litter of blood and packing it into a dozen vials for the Space Marine.

Aphael loses composure for a second, before receiving the gift of blood with reverence. "Our geneseers and Librarians will need to test it, of course. But...if it does work."

"Yes, I have a hundred children out in the Fringe. And their children sometimes receive the same gift. It will take time to spread out the genes to an entire Hive world, but not that much. Perhaps 10 generations. It is exponential growth after all. With no mutations." I explain softly.

The Space Marine blinks in surprise and hope. "The Emperor protects! Even the mere hope is enough to sustain me now. Thank you, Lord Pef!" he proclaims and bows a millimeter.

This is unexpected. But then, fortune favors the bold.

"Inform the Fabricator General should the geneseed be compatible. In two decades I will assemble a hundred potential Blank recruits and bring them here at Antax. If they work, I will consider a permanent solution." I reply politely.

This might not work at all. Or it might backfire somehow.

All three of us hold hands and tentacles as a new pact if forged over my blood, and the blood shared in battle.