With the communion ritual completed we can begin plotting course. Joline heads to the navigator's throne and I mentally activate the small nub that I got from my father, I should probably come up with a name for the thing, can't just keep calling it 'the nub'.
Our destination is the hive world Kearus, one of the main sources of manpower for this sector's imperial guard. Kearus trains a much larger pdf than other planets, allowing the imperial guard to simply recruit the best of the planets pdf and skip out on a bunch of the training.
Kearus is too far to get there in a single jump, so I'll need to plot a course towards it while taking into account the need to refuel and restock between each jump.
I put my hand in the pocket of my robes and take out a grey round ball about the size of my fist. This is a copy of our star chart, or rather of the chart that my mother stole from her family. The difference between an original chart and its copy is that the original will update itself while jumping, a copy is static and will not. This is why star charts are so precious, as losing one means having to start mapping star lanes from scratch. They are fairly abundant by navigator standards despite there being no real way to replicate them.
I take my circlet off, uncovering my third eye. The girls we used for the ritual have already left for their quarters, we'll call them if we need to do other rituals, for now their presence is unnecessary.
I give the orb in my hand a deep look. There's multiple viable routes to Kearus, a large majority of them are fairly risky, with warp currents and cosmic horrors above the level that one could call 'reasonably safe'. There's two direct routes, but both of those involve going through daemon infestations, so no thanks.
There's a few more safe routes, but most of them will take too much time in both realspace and shipspace. There's a single good route that is both safe and pretty quick, so I end up settling for it.
Next on the list is interfacing with the ship and starting the first jump. Thanks to our parents' gift I don't have to plug into the navigator's throne to do so. I close my eyes and focus on the ship.
Whilst interfaced like this the ship's systems will boost my natural capabilities to an astronomical extent, allowing my supernatural senses to permeate throughout the entire ship. The light of the astronomican slowly becomes more and more bright as I continue interfacing with the ship.
The process is swift and painless, which is all thanks to the communion ritual. Without it this process would be the equivalent of sticking my soul into a theoretical warp blender. I calculate the exact angle we need to be in, the total distance between us and our first destination and the amount of time the jump will take. This process would be almost impossible without having the astronomican serving as a constant reference point.
In theory the eye of terror can also be used as a reference point in a pinch, you just need to kill yourself afterwards.
I signal for a maid to prepare a vox caster for me. While she is doing so I double check all of my calculations. When she arrives she holds the vox for me. "Course plotted. You can begin jumping, we will update the data throughout the jump. ETA is one year real time, one month shiptime."
Time flows differently throughout the warp and realspace. You can spend two hundred years in a jump and arrive a second later in real time. You can also spend a second in a jump and arrive a millennium later in realspace. Arriving earlier in realspace time is also possible, but it's an extremely rare occurrence.
Once the ship is in position I give confirmation for the jump to begin. The gellar fields are activated. The ship's warp drive then tears open a rift into unreality, allowing us to casually enter hell. The gellar fields protect us from both daemons and any other cosmic horrors waiting for a mere flicker of the gellar fields.
The entry into the warp is one of the more dangerous parts of warp jumps, the forceful entry feels as if psychic hammers were relentlessly battering the gellar fields. I relax once the ship is fully out of realspace.
Our first stop is a supply station in the Xovrian system, we'll make a pit stop for fuel and supplies before going on over to the next stop. I relay all of the data regarding our course to my sister through the ship's systems.
The only thing left now is making the occasional correction throughout our journey. I open my eyes and see a freshly unplugged and crouching Joline begin to draw ritual glyphs on the floor around the navigator's throne. "What are you doing?"
She continues drawing as she gives me her reply. "Relax, I'm just preparing a divination ritual for when we get to Xovrian."
When it comes to using our powers I am better than Joline. However, when it comes to rituals and warp sorcery my sister is superior to me by far. I mentally redo the calculations for our route and provide corrections to the bridge.
I shake my head. "And why didn't you do the ritual before we did our jump?"
She rises up from her crouch. "Because the ritual is going to take two months to properly set up. The ritual is also more for general divination instead of navigation, so it would have been pointless to use then."
I mentally redo the calculations and confirm that we're on the correct route. "How does it take you two months to draw squiggly lines with chalk all over the floor?"
She points her finger at me. "Because I need a lot of blood from navigator offspring to do the ritual! Why couldn't you be more of a horndog and get yourself a real harem like dad?"
A navigator can only be born between two navigators, our genes are too recessive for anything else to be viable. Children born between a navigator and a baseline human are somewhat normal, with some useful additions.
They are more resilient to the dangers of the warp, making for potentially phenomenal astropaths if lucky, or unlucky enough, to be psykers. What makes them crucial for navigators however is their innate resistance to not dying from our third eye, allowing for both specialized household guards and personal servants.
We can't use our powers with our third eye uncovered, so servants capable of not dying instantly to it are extremely useful both while training our powers and while navigating ships. This sort of half-navigators are also what usually comprises most of a navigator house's guards, as they are extremely compatible strategically with our abilities. Being able to instantly kill all of your enemies while leaving your allies intact in the process is the backbone of our military power.
I mentally redo the calculations, the few necessary corrections are sent to the bridge. I pinch my nose. "This is the thousandth time we've talked about this, incest would destabali-"
She sticks her tongue at me. "Mimimimimi~ I am starting to think that you're just scared of women."
I frown. "I'm not!"
"You are!"
"I'm not!"
"You are!"
I redo the calculations, confirming that we are on course. I sigh. "I'll think about it."
Joline narrows her eyes at me. "That's the fifth time you've used that excuse, you do realise that the sooner you get on with it, the sooner they'll grow up to be useful right? We can't rely on our father's guards anymore. Any of them that die from now on we won't be able to replenish for a good while."
I redo the calculations, giving out a single correction. I sigh. "Fine, We'll see what we can do when we get to Xovrian, there's an admech agriworld in the system we can pull some manpower from."
Joline pumps her fist. "Finally! Just a few more years until I can finally have my own personal servants!"
I redo the calculations, everything's good. I begin walking towards Joline. She quickly realises her mistake. "Erm- I mea- We can finally begin training our own personal guard! None will sta-"
I flick her forehead. "Since you're so eager to grow our military might, why don't you go and start preparing a training program for them with the head of the household guard?"
"Because I need to take over for you in five hours, dumbass."
"Then go get some sleep, since you won't be seeing any for twelve hours afterwards."
—
The time to switch has come. Joline and I both go to the navigator's throne and plug ourselves in, taking the cables hanging from it and plugging them into the ports on the napes of our necks. I slowly hand over control to her, both of us making sure that everything is on course as I slowly do so. Once she is fully guiding the ship I remove the nub from the nape of my neck and hand it over to her. She plugs it in and then we both plug ourselves out of the navigators throne.
I yawn. "I'll go get some sleep, if anything comes up wake me up."
Joline opens her eyes and nods. "Will do. By the way, the reason we only have maids as servants is because I asked father to not give us any butlers, take one with you and get to work."
My eyes twitch. "You do realise that Julian was the one cooking your steaks right?"
Her eyes widen as she is enlightened to her error. "You're lying."
I open the door to our bedroom. "Eh, you'll see at dinner tomorrow."
She ends up finding out that indeed, Julian was the best at cooking steaks out of the household servants.
—
"Krouss! Plug in quickly, you don't want to miss this!"
I sigh, go to the navigators throne and plug myself in. As she slowly begins to share her senses with me I realise that I was right, I don't want to miss this.
A bloodletter and a daemonette are currently having a stand off in the cargo holds. Daemonic incursions are not uncommon, but one happening in a safeish route is pretty rare.
The bloodletter swings his sword at the daemonette horizontally, almost cleaving her in half if it was not for her swift retreat. The sword ends up clipping a barrel of prometherum, drenching the floor in the unstable flammable liquid.
The daemonette hisses at the bloodletter, charges towards it and impales its shoulder with it's hand-claw before it can recover from its swing. An absurd amount of blood immediately begins to pour out of the bloodletters open wound. The bloodletter takes one hand off of his sword and grabs the daemonettes hand, forcing her to be in close range of it.
The daemonette realises the predicament that she is in and tries to chop the bloodletters hand with her free arm-claw. Before she can close her claw and escape the bloodletter successfully decapitates the daemonette.
It's at this point that the ship's guards finally arrive and begin to rain down las fire upon the offending daemon. Since the ground is still drenched in prometheum the resulting explosion kills both the daemon, the guard and everyone still in that storage block.
I give her a nod. "Yeah, that was pretty brutal. Didn't expect an incursion to happen this early."
She frowns. "Incursion? Are you retarded? The imperial guard's lord commander and the navy's admiral are having an affair."
—
Both Joline and I are ready and plugged into the ship for the end of the warp jump. The warp drives open a hole to the materium, allowing us to re-enter reality. It is only once the ship has left the warp entirely and the warp-rift closes that we relax.
I pat Joline's shoulder after we both unplug from the throne. "What do you want to do first? We'll probably remain in this system for the next two weeks."
Joline just grabs my hand and drags me to our bedroom. Can't really have any fun when a single moment of distraction could lead to damnation.
The next day we schedule a meeting with the admech magos of the nearby agri-world, requisition a system ship and fly to the admech agri-world of Falgin. When we arrive there we are swiftly led to the magos by an acolyte. Joline spends the whole way looking fascinated at the world around us.
We find the magos overseeing the construction of farming machinery. Our arrival is announced by the acolyte who has led us to him. "The scions of house Hircus have arrived."
The magos waves him away. His mechanical voice sounds out. "What does house Hircus wish to trade for?"
There's generally two ways of trading among high-ranking imperium officials. The imperial throne and favors. Simple things, such as manpower, food and simple supplies are traded using imperial thrones. More valuable resources are traded with favors.
I give him our request. "We wish to resupply on luxury food and manpower. We also wish to remain on the planet for the following days."
We don't have much luxury food onboard, so this is a pretty good opportunity to restock. Getting more armor and weaponry to expand the household guard will only be possible at the fourth system, which will contain a minor forge-world.
Joline jabs me in my ribs. The magos either pretends he saw nothing or does not care, probably the latter. "We will calculate the total costs and inform you tomorrow on the total. Is there anything else?"
Joline, seeing my reluctance, takes the initiative. "We need a breeding stock of two thousand to replenish our household guard."
The magos thankfully does not comment on my twitching eyes. "It will be added to the list. The acolyte who led you here, AGH-712, will serve as your guide for the duration of your stay."
Normally this sort of trade could be handled by an envoy, but we wanted to sightsee.
—
It's the fifth day since we've arrived on the agriworld. Joline and I are currently looking downwards from our balcony at the small hive-city underneath us.
This is the planet's single hive-city, serving mainly as a way to replenish their workforce. I haven't been on an actual planet ever since I was reborn here, whilst my sister has never been on an actual habitable world before.
Joline is leaning down, looking curiously at the streets below, taking everything in. I pat her back. "Seen anything interesting?"
Joline nods. "See that beggar? Whenever he leaves another comes to take his place. When that guy leaves this beggar comes back. What do you think is going on?"
I continue rubbing her back. "They're probably working together to get as many thrones as possible."
Joline takes a step back and leans her back on me. "You know, when we grow old we should probably get ourselves a world like this. Now that we've been here I've started to wonder what a garden world is like."
I hug her. "It would probably make for a pretty good retirement plan for once we get old."
She nuzzles into my back. "Have you finished choosing the breeding stock? Or should your wife go and choose your harem for you?"
I freeze. She does not relent. "Poor widdle Krouss is scwared by widdle women?"
I take a deep breath. "There's nothing to really choose. It's two thousand women, do you- You're just fucking with me aren't you?"
"Tehee"
Since we're not in danger of dying via daemon I don't hesitate to grab her foot and proceed to tickle her mercilessly for the following five minutes.
I am interrupted from my petty revenge by a maid calmly handing me a vox. Joline and I get up, steady our breathing and take the vox. "Krouss of house Hircus here, what is it?"
"We have finished refueling and resupplying earlier than scheduled, your lordship."
That's honestly a little disappointing, I'd hoped to enjoy having a sun above me for a little bit more time. "We will be coming soon. Is there anything else?"
"No, your lordship."
—
Our second stop is the hiveworld of Kinja.
It is the singular habitable planet in the Kinja system, serving as both a stop to replenish some logistical manpower and to refuel.
When the bridge contacts the planet they discover something fairly troublesome.
Kinja is currently under rebel control, In order to resupply we need to invade and take control of the planet away from the rebels.
Joline and I have joined the strategy meeting in the bridge, me out of a desire to get some leadership experience and Joline just following me out of curiosity. A large holographic display of the hiveworld is displayed in the middle of the bridge.
The lord commander, a young looking blond man named Pavlo, begins the meeting. "Rebels have taken over the planetary administration, killing all of the nobles. We have a shortage of manpower but plenty of combat vehicles. It is safe to assume that the PDF's stores have been looted."
Joline looks at the holographic display, then points at the governor's palace. The display quickly zooms in to display the palace in detail. She crosses her arms. "Why don't you just take over the palace? There's plenty of supplies stashed there. The governor probably didn't skip on security, so they shouldn't be looted just yet."
The lord commander thinks on the suggestion. "That would not work. Taking over the palace would not give us control of the planet. We need to choose an entrypoint, stage our landing and begin to purge the rebels."
The holographic image switches to an enclosed section of the hive-world with a single entrance point. "We land at the entry-point and secure the enclosure, it will provide a more than suitable staging point for an invasion. The locals can be conscripted and used in place of trained recruits, their deaths will not affect our combat strength negatively."
I raise my hand. "Can the two of us participate in the invasion?"
Pavlo frowns. "Why would you want to put yourself in danger in this manner?"
Joline answers the question. "We want to get some combat experience. Can't really do that when stuck on the ship can we?"
Pavlo closes his eyes, seemingly weighing the pros and cons of acquiescing to our request. Five seconds later he opens his eyes. "You may participate, but I must insist on a heavy guard being assigned to the two of you."
I give him a nod. "That will not be an issue. We have our own custom made power armor, so we will not be in significant danger."
That seems to give Pavlo some relief. The two of us dying wouldn't affect the fleet itself much, since they can borrow a navigator from one of the other ships. But having a reputation as being dangerous for navigators is extremely bad for business.
Pavlo ends the meeting. "We will begin the attack in two days. An alpha strike will be undertaken to take control of the enclosure, the main invasion force will then land safely and proceed to crush the rebel forces. Any questions."
I cough. "May we join the alpha strike?"
I'm pretty sure that Pavlo might get an aneurism by the time that we reach Kearus.