40 Thousand Reasons

As my fleet was preparing to depart for the Fringe, I held council with those present from my clan.

"Larrisa, you will be given a long task. Take all the destroyers and travel to Forge World Incaladion. If the rumours I heard are correct, you will be needed to rescue them from another invasion. Veteran Astartes Koris will be stationed on your bridge, and a Catachan regiment will be dispersed among the destroyers for boarding operations. Do you understand?" I asked gently.

With 11 missile destroyers able to fire 330 torpedoes, including a vortex warhead, my daughter would have sufficient firepower to enact a miracle rescue.

She seemed a bit overwhelmed, but quickly recovered. "Of course dad. I expect I will carry some gifts with me, for the Fabricator of Incaladion?" Larrisa asked with a sneaky smile. She was a Rogue Trader by birth and nurture, after all.

I just nodded. Of course she will. A dozen young Blank girls, who will become ship Captains for my Dynasty after they reached maturity. But meanwhile, they could provide Forge Incaladion with eggs and gene samples for Blank Machine Spirits.

Plus a small cache of STC templates, that Larrisa wouldn't know the contents of.

Uncle Jorvis was tasked with being her X.O. as the man had plenty of void travel and combat experience, and with a Veteran Astartes for a bodyguard, plus her blood-bound regiment of Catachans, via her husband, Larrisa should be as safe as possible, in hell.

Uncle Wentian will stay at Forge Shenlong on the Bellus, and wait for the next 2 Lima destroyers to be completed, and then travel to Triplex Phall with the new ship templates. He would return to Illevar later, with whatever prize ships the large shipyards will be able to gift to our clan. Perhaps with more tanks and gunships in the cargo hold, if the Fabricator was generous. He also had a dozen babies left in his care, also Blanks. Forge Triplex Phall would definitely appreciate their genes.

Veteran Blood Angel Turcio was assigned as his bodyguard, and my insurance, until they returned to Illevar.

And that was it. I needed the corvettes for my Canticle's escort, and they weren't really capable of independent deployment, as almost any other vessel would outgun and outmass the small escorts.

I did have some 30 boys with Blank genes in the nursery, but they were slated for the Space Marines, after they lived a nice childhood, and learned all I could teach them, and conceived the next generation with their own harems.

My own cargo holds were chuck full of light armor vehicles, and even a few dozen Volcano Sentinels, as an incipient anti-titan corps. The long lance weapons were held and used as sniper rifles, and I split them evenly among my void marines and the better Sentinel pilots from the Catachans. All the pilots had to accept savant implants, because these walkers were awesome, but also expensive and rather hard to replace.

The Fabricator of Shenlong owed me greatly for the precious archeotech relics salvaged from the Bellus, and thus an equitable solution had been reached.

I even had a short range teleporter installed on the Canticle, of Mechanicus production. The Canticle already had a Warp-teleporter, but usable only for potent psykers. Not all that useful, as I lacked psyker powers.

With a mechanical teleporter though, and one accessible via my implant, new options have opened. These people in the future were slightly retarded when considering military stratagems, but I wasn't brainwashed into believing glorious melee fights were the ultimate achievement in someone's life.

There was one thing to insert Astartes into key areas to capture a pirate ship, and thus obtain precious reusable loot at a million-th of the cost. Or more, if there would be another Grand Cruiser as prize.

But boarding Tyranid or Chaos ships with marines? Why? Wouldn't it be more effective to teleport an atomic warhead?

My tech-priests were already assembling a conveyor-belt style mechanism, to quickly reload the teleporter with atomic disinfectants and anti-bodies.

An incline ramp on the upper deck would simply roll and guide the cylindrical warheads into position, then fwooop! The bomb would be displaced inside the target vessel or fort, bypassing any armor and most types of shields.

Even void shields could be breached, if the enemy didn't carefully police their own transmissions, such as auspex-return lasers and graviton based auguries, using those exact signals as locators for a teleport.

Passive sensors would obviously not be affected, but nearly nobody in the universe bothered to safeguard themselves from active sensors pings.

The lessons of submarine and bomber warfare had been lost to the future, but I was ready to capitalize on the old addendum: Those who forget history are fated to repeat the same mistakes.

"Engines to full, make for the translation limit!" I ordered from my Captain chair, after the conclave was over and the farewells had been said, and the hugs to the departing kids faded.

Canis wailed as well, somehow knowing his puppies were leaving for a long time.

But after the fleet entered Warp, I returned to my rooms to procreate more babies to replace the missing ones.

One last time with Decima, who wanted a break to recover and manage the clan affairs without a marsupial pouch attached to her stomach.

Henna was still good for a few more, and rather happy with her role.

Then another squad of Catachans amazons, and Naya, a new void marine woman, who reached adulthood right here among the crew, and wanted to take part in the clan's growth. Of course, a Rogue Trader was the best catch she could hope for, and there were many perks attached to her concubine role.

No more work shifts and boring guard hours, a bit less training, better food and living quarters, and as expected: lots and lots of deep husbandry.

Naya lounged in my lap as I rested in the cogitator armchair, and watched with interest as I struggled to complete another STC template, for a ship assault Rapier.

"Why does it have a single Onslaught_Gatling_Cannon? Wouldn't it be better with two?" she wondered with a naive voice, while reading the description on the side.

I let my left hand cup her breast as it drew my hand back from the holofield. "That weapon fires 8700 rounds per minute, each round as big as a heavy bolt. The recoil is immense, my dear." I explained in a gentle voice.

It was hard to keep the small Rapier from flipping over anyway. Two guns would surely make it take off, backwards. I had to use triple-sized tracks, just for enough friction to counter the recoil, plus hydraulic absorbers.

"Alright then, my lord. But I still say more guns are better. Perhaps smaller ones?" she asked again.

I saved the new template and opened the next, with 6 lascannons stacked three guns over the next layer.

"Like this one? Well...the problem is energy. Lascannons can't fire for too long, before the capacitor is discharged completely." I mused to myself. Whoever was in front of those guns wouldn't enjoy a single salvo, not to mention 3 or 4 shots.

"It looks great though, by the Emperor! These Mechanicus guys sure come up with the nicest weapons, don't they?" Naya inquired naively, and Ludvaius coughed for no reason somewhere beside the door.

Well, the Blood Angel did have a point. "Of course they do, my dear. But this weapon is a Blood Angel design. Sadly, they never considered us normal people, and the Rapier controls don't have servo-motors. Without power armor, it will be hard to use them, and harder to hit anything not standing still."

Naya sighed in defeat. "So we need power armor for our void marines, or servo-motors, whatever those are."

I kissed her head, and started working on that. Power armor wasn't an option, but servo-motors were basic technology. Even I knew how to design a car steering wheel. Well, a car with tracks.

A few hours later, the new Beam Rapier template was complete and Naya slept blissfully in my arms.

Thus, I left her to sleep in my bed, and checked my timer. I had 3 hours of creation remaining, so I loaded the Doomhammer schematics obtained from Shenlong, Baneblades armed with a (weaker) Magma Cannon, a type of heavy lance that could melt rocks into lava or magma.

It was a pity to have a super heavy tank use only one such weapon, and Naya was right. Two guns were better than one. I began by removing the troop compartment, and installed an atomantic reactor in its place, then enlarged and upgraded the turret to hold a twin Magma_Cannon. Plenty of energy left so shields and defensive multilasers would be feasible.

Ludvaius had sneaked behind me to appraise the new template. "This Baneblade variant...it's for your own troops, right?"

"Yes, my friend. It will do for a start. Imagine a hundred of them, besieging any feral world in the Fringe." I replied thoughtfully while sipping from the recaf mug.

"No ammunition and no fuel, except radioactive rods for the reactor. Completely self-sustaining for a decade." he said in approval.

Exactly my point.

I saved the new tank template and went to sleep, hoping for a better future.