Chapter 552: The Repaired Sword-Class Escort
When Kian heard that the Sword-class escort had been repaired and was anchored above Agri-World 496b right now, the look in his eyes changed completely.
"Quick, quick, quick! Right now, this second, get me up there!!"
In the cold, cruel universe of Warhammer 40K, if you wanted control of your own fate, you had to have a ship that could enter the Warp!
And now, through long, hard struggle, Kian finally had a ship of his own!
From now on, things like planetary extinction couldn't threaten him anymore. Worst case, he'd just get on his ship and leave.
Governor Zeppelin took him to the top of the Governor's Spire, and they boarded a shuttle into space.
Before long, through the shuttle window, Kian could see the Sword-class escort in low orbit.
The Sword-class escort was one of the Imperium's newer escort designs: 2.2 kilometres long, 300 metres wide, and 400 metres high.
A behemoth like that parked in low orbit could be seen with the naked eye from the surface!
The shuttle touched down on the escort's deck, the hatch opened, and Kian leapt out in excitement. He wanted to kiss every corner of this ship!
But the moment his feet actually landed on the steel deck, the Scavenge-Strike-Extract System in his head chimed.
Ding! Detected an unnamed warship wholly owned by the host. Bind this ship as your flagship? Once bound, the flagship will automatically become one of the host's Sanctums.
The ship will gain abilities including redeployment, fabrication, intelligence gathering, and warehouse preparation.
Yes / No?
Kian opened the system panel in his head and read the details.
In short, some great being in the Empyrean had noticed that old Kian hadn't done any scavenging in ages and had specially upgraded his system.
All he had to do was bind the "flagship" designation to this Sword-class escort, and it would become his mobile Sanctum!
If he got a more powerful warship later, he could unbind it and bind the Sanctum to the new ship instead.
What was there to think about? Bind it.
Kian chose Yes, and another prompt popped up in his head.
Please name your flagship.
He'd already picked out a name for the ship long ago, so he entered it in the input field with his mind:
Golden Road.
Once he confirmed the name, the system popped up another notice.
Flagship: Sword-class escort, name Golden Road. Confirmed.
Mobile Sanctum system bound and upgraded. Host may review details.
After that, a new option appeared under Kian's Sanctum management menu.
The Sanctum management menu now read:
Agri-World 496b Underhive Sanctum.
Inquisitor Trasolh's Flagship Sanctum.
And now a third appeared: Sword-class escort Golden Road Sanctum.
When he opened each one with his mind, it showed all kinds of details: what level it had reached, what it did, and so on. The Golden Road Sanctum was the same.
Because it was a mobile Sanctum, its management menu covered the entire warship. Every function the ship had could be viewed right here!
Kian began going through the mobile Sanctum, which is to say the Sword-class escort, one item at a time:
Hull Defence Lv.1: Medium armour. A composite of ceramite, plasteel, marble, and alloy steel. Resists the vast majority of physical attacks and handles a wide range of contingencies in the void.
(Upgrade preview: Hull Defence Lv.2: Replace most of the hull's armour layers with tougher alloy steel. This will greatly increase the ship's mass and reduce cruising speed by 20%.)
Void Shield Generator Lv.1: A basic void shield, powered by the ship's plasma reactors. Withstands bombardment from the vast majority of enemy weapons and is difficult to overload.
(Upgrade preview: Void Shield Generator Lv.2: Add a second void shield generator. When the first shield is overloaded, the second activates to continue defending while the first recharges. A second void shield increases the ship's defences exponentially. With two shields recharging in turn, an enemy might exhaust every shell it has without damaging the ship, unless it can overload both shields at once. However, adding a second shield sacrifices several large internal compartments and requires a new plasma reactor to power it.)
Armament Lv.1: Four dorsal lance turrets with 360-degree traverse, capable of firing beams that can melt a mountain into crystal. Eight 6,000mm torpedo tubes at the prow. Forty-eight 2,000mm macro-cannons across both broadsides and the ventral hull. Assorted point-defence weapons.
(Upgrade preview: Armament Lv.2: On a ship this size, you can of course mount every strange and exotic weapon you can find. However, each weapon you mount will sacrifice a different number of compartments. Special energy weapons also require additional plasma reactors, which will sacrifice still more compartments. On a warship, compartments are the most precious resource of all!)
Power Lv.1: The ship has seven plasma reactors in total: two power the engines, two power the energy weapons, two power the void shields, and one is held in reserve. The reactors are distributed throughout the ship, each serving a different section. Even if some are destroyed, the rest will continue to function.
(Upgrade preview: Power Lv.2: You may sacrifice some compartments to install additional plasma reactors. Alternatively, if you can find a more advanced power source and integrate it into the ship's power grid, the ship's available power will increase. Consider carefully, however. Adding surplus power is not a wise move. Compartments are a precious resource, and having exactly enough power is the way to go.)
Engines Lv.1: A four-nozzle engine array at the stern, providing the ship with tremendous thrust.
(Upgrade preview: Engines Lv.2: Add two more engine nozzle clusters to further improve the ship's conventional cruising performance. Prerequisite: Power Lv.2. Requires one additional shipboard plasma reactor to power the two extra engines.)
Shipboard Manufactorum Lv.1: Every warship on the move is a city on the move. It must produce enough goods for the people aboard to consume. If your ship carries a significant number of armed personnel, the ammunition they use and the wear on their heavy equipment will also draw on the manufactorum's output. At present, the shipboard manufactorum can only produce light equipment.
(Upgrade preview: Shipboard Manufactorum Lv.2: Spend some compartments and set up special production lines to gain the ability to produce heavy equipment.)
Hangar Lv.1: Room to launch and land 30 large fighters or shuttles.
Vehicle Deck Lv.1: A vast space with room for about 200 Leman Russ tanks.
Barracks Lv.1: Room aboard for about 10,000 infantry. Of course, if you cram soldiers into the corridors and ignore morale, that number could be several times higher.
Navigation Spire Lv.1: Where the Navigator works. Once the ship enters the Warp, the Navigator stands on the Navigation Spire, watches the Warp storms, and finds a safe course.
Choir Chamber Lv.1: Where the Astropaths work. The more Astropaths you put in here, the farther the communication range and the shorter the delay. Minimum one, maximum 300.
Chapels Lv.2: Your ship comes pre-fitted with 5 large chapels, 8 medium chapels, and 32 small chapels. In this atmosphere, your crew is sure to be very devout.
Free Space: Your ship has 48 units of free space remaining. (Each unit can hold roughly 100 Leman Russ tanks. If you've used all your space but still have things to carry, you can try mounting some containers on the outside of the hull. Note: external containers must not obstruct the ship's weapon arcs. Containers mounted close to a laser weapon's muzzle may be melted if the weapon fires in an emergency! In addition, during conventional travel, if a fast-moving body strikes a container, its cargo will be destroyed, since it lacks heavy armour. During Warp travel, some daemons that slip through the Gellar Field may take an interest in external containers and tamper with their contents. Bolt-ons are risky. Bolt on responsibly!)
While Kian was reading through all this, the Captain came up.
"Ha ha! Look who's here! Ten years, and our space boy is still as dashing as ever!!"
The Captain came over and gave Kian a big hug, then his expression grew very complicated.
Back when he'd been drinking in that bar, this young man had asked him how to get a warship of his own, and he'd thought the kid was a dreamer.
And now, in what felt like no time at all, the kid had a warship, a real warship that could enter the Warp!
Kian grinned at the Captain.
"This is my warship, but it's your ride too. How does it feel to fly her?"
The Captain's face lit up with a look of pure bliss.
"I could die happy!!"
Then the Captain walked Kian through the ship's capabilities. Kian had already seen most of them on the system panel, and they matched what the Captain said exactly.
The Captain went into more detail on crew, though.
There were ten thousand people aboard the ship right now.
Seven thousand of them were the ship's internal operators. Without them, the ship couldn't move.
Another thousand were technicians the tech-priests had sent aboard, responsible for maintaining the weapons, the reactors, and the rest.
And another two thousand were mortal men-at-arms responsible for security aboard the ship.
The Captain said:
"In the more than ten years you were gone, the Angels kept their promise and towed your Sword-class escort to the Forge World for repairs.
"Once the ship was repaired, the Angels pulled together some crew from their own ship and mobilized the local tech-priests, and between them they scraped together a basic crew that could fly her for you.
"After that the Angels left to go fight.
"Lord Nor'n told me he's been promoted to Captain of their company and is still campaigning all over our sector.
"If you get in touch with him when you're back, you can pick up your old partnership."
Nor'n's face came to Kian's mind. He hadn't expected the big guy to be promoted to Astartes Captain so fast. In the Astartes hierarchy, that put him in the ruling class.
He mused on that for a while, then his expression turned very serious.
He looked at this enormous warship, his very own, and knew it was time to leave!
He would fly this ship out among the stars and forge his own path to a trading dynasty!
Kian walked through the whole ship, looked over every facility, and called in several people in key positions to talk. When he was satisfied there were no problems, he decided to set sail.
But before he set sail, the ship couldn't fly empty. He had to load it full of goods.
And Agri-World 496b just happened to have the hard currency the galactic market needed!
Kian immediately boarded a shuttle back down to the surface and had Governor Zeppelin show him the lasrifle production lines.
Zeppelin took Kian to a vast new industrial district in the hive, where nearly five million people worked producing laser weapons.
As he led Kian past all kinds of machinery, Zeppelin explained:
"After ten years of development and support from the Forge World, our planet can now produce lasrifles up to standard. Our tithe has been changed to ten million lasrifles a year, which is much easier than before.
"Besides lasrifles, we can also make laser cannons of every calibre.
"The largest calibre is a 100mm laser cannon. It's mounted on a Leman Russ tank, and one shot can melt another Leman Russ into molten iron!"
Kian said:
"I need to put a production line aboard my ship, but the ship's space is limited. I can't take anything too big."
Governor Zeppelin thought about it and suggested:
"Then take one of our most advanced power-cell production lines and a laser weapon production line.
"They're semi-automated and not very big. Once they're installed, they can produce at least ten thousand lasrifles a month."
Zeppelin described the size of the production lines, and Kian estimated it would take about two units of free space to fit them, so he agreed.
Over the next month or so, the laser weapon production lines were shipped up and installed.
In addition, Kian filled all the ship's empty compartments: one fifth with raw materials for lasrifle production, and four fifths with canned guana-beast meat.
Why carry lasrifle raw materials instead of finished lasrifles?
Because raw materials took up less space than lasrifles.
Say Kian flew to some planet whose people wanted to buy lasrifles.
His ship only had so much room. If he brought a hundred lasrifles, once they were sold, that was it.
But if he used the space for those hundred lasrifles to carry raw materials, then produced lasrifles on the spot with his production line, he could sell at least a thousand!
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