Chapter 161: The T'au Are Too Much
[Urgent Communication: Top Secret Information - Epsilon Level]
[Order in the Orpheus splinter fleet has severely fluctuated. The proliferation of a large number of Genestealer xenos has thrown the interior of the various ships into a considerable state of chaos.
Although the loyal commanders of the Imperial Navy have fought bravely against the xenos, before the arrival of reinforcements, the vast majority of the starship command echelons have already suffered heavy losses.
Currently, after nearly a month of combat, the Genestealer infestation in the fleet has been cleared. The splinter fleet has regained control and is undergoing a refit in the Macragge system.
Let us remember the heroic sacrifice of the Imperial Navy, for preserving the most precious property of the Imperium.]
"So you ran into the Imperial Mascot?" Ramesses asked in a teasing tone in the transmigrators' hut.
The flames before him flickered strangely. Although they had no fuel, they continued to burn. Twisted daemonic faces would occasionally appear in the flames, letting out silent wails. Even with the psychic insulation, the air in the room became thick and oppressive.
"What did he say?" Ramesses continued to ask, his eyes fixed on a twisted face that was dissipating in the flames.
"He supports our actions. To put it bluntly, he was just making empty promises," Romulus shrugged, looking at Arthur with a lingering fear. Who knew how Old Man Gold could project himself just through a piece of wargear. And he could actually speak in coherent sentences.
Ding~
Romulus quickly opened the message. On his vision, a pop-up window appeared on the psychic panel that Ramesses had helped to build.
A message had come from the Navigators. The Warp storm that had been surrounding the southern region of Tigrus was showing signs of calming down. At almost the same instant, they had all glimpsed a clear and calm route.
Warp travel was always accompanied by danger. Few things were more dangerous than a Warp storm. Once a ship encountered a Warp storm, the best-case scenario was to be blown off course, appearing at an arbitrary distance from the destination. And the worst-case scenario was to be lost within it.
Of course, in the face of such a Warp threat, the Navigators also had countermeasures. That was to rely on continuous short-range Warp jumps to bypass the areas affected by the Warp. Although there were still risks, the current priority of the fleet was to aid Ultramar. This risk was worth it.
And now, the appearance of a stable path was the best possible thing.
Everyone believed this was the protection of the Emperor.
"Alright, I underestimated the Emperor. At least you don't have to burn daemons to calculate the route anymore," Romulus sighed, recalling the stories from the Age of Apostasy. Dealing with a localized Warp storm really didn't seem to be a difficult matter for the Emperor.
So, in the original timeline, when the T'au were opening wormholes and expanding on both sides of the Great Rift, what in the hell were you doing, Emperor?
"I haven't started calculating the route yet—but your encounter is really interesting." Ramesses pinched his chin and thought. "When I contacted Old Man Gold before, it wasn't like this. His personality was so fragmented that it was difficult to get a single grunt out of him. And there were all sorts of extreme emotions in there, so dangerous that they weren't much different from a Chaos God. Could it be because of Arthur?"
Arthur lowered his gaze and looked at the black sword in his hand. The gilded patterns were slowly flowing on the deep background. "You mean because of my special trait?" he thought for a moment, then spoke, his eyelashes casting a fine shadow on his cheeks as he raised his eyelids. "The personality of the Emperor that wants to squeeze through can only be a normal one. Because in my cognition, his other personalities probably can't be considered human."
"Although the speculation of directly revoking some of Old Man Gold's humanity is a bit absurd, if it's you, it seems reasonable," Ramesses suddenly laughed, then patted Arthur's shoulder. "Master Arthur, you should go and make your presence known among the Sisters and the Astartes more often. Charge up this set of equipment of yours, so that Old Man Gold doesn't fail to speak in human language at a critical moment."
He then looked back at the soul circuit that was hovering in the void, and frowned slightly, beginning to ponder. To be honest, Ramesses didn't think much of the T'au. The strongest opponent at present was still the Hive Fleet. If Arthur could really refuse an existence of the Emperor's level, then one of his grand ideas might just be able to work.
The soul circuit was essentially a Warp-energy amplifier. Although its original function was definitely not this, the reason the Imperium had mined the material for this circuit on Optus in the past was indeed for this reason. The Imperium's psychic Titans, relying on these materials, could greatly save the consumption of psykers. The consequence of their every action was that the Eldar within the soul circuit were responsible for facing the tides of the Warp, while they could freely display their power in the real universe. It wasn't until the Eldar in the circuit had been beaten into fragments and had all died that Optus was abandoned by the Imperium and became an ordinary mining planet.
Ramesses didn't have this pressure. He could use daemons just the same.
And Arthur, as a powerful psychic jammer... think about it. For a psychic-linked swarm, if its psychic core was squeezed by an unknown force, and then another psychic power was connected to it, what would happen?
"Understood," Arthur nodded.
"There's one more thing. The T'au Empire's star-chart." Romulus was flipping through the logs.
According to the transmigrators' memory, the current T'au Empire should have expanded to about three hundred planets, about the size of two Imperial sectors. Among these three hundred planets, only the fifteen Sept worlds that served as the ruling core were of value. The rest were not worth investigating. And among the Sept worlds, the best targets for the transmigrators were either the T'au homeworld or the world where the Earth Caste was located.
The Earth Caste, in the T'au society, served as the producers and researchers. The technological progress and production of the T'au were all the responsibility of this caste.
The crusade fleet could accept at most three additional Warp-jumps. They had to go to the Sept world of Dal'yth, which was the main battlefield between the Imperium and the T'au in the Damocles Gulf. Their main purpose was to pass through the Warp storm to provide support. It was impossible to go looking for three hundred planets one by one.
"For now, we can only query the allied races of the T'au?"
"Yes. Because they're soulless, the prophecy has no reference point. One can only say that, as expected of GW's chosen race, they were born to make a living in this kind of galaxy," Ramesses nodded.
It was truly absurd. The Eldar's prophecies could even calculate where the World Eaters' Primarch Angron's incubation pod would land, and then hire the Drukhari to carry out a precision strike. But because the T'au's Warp-presence was as dim as a rock, it directly rendered the Eldar's prophecies useless.
Remembering the look of utter shock on the Eldar Farseer Hector's face, as if he were saying, "So there's this kind of race in the galaxy," Ramesses felt a toothache.
It was too abstract.
(End of Chapter)