Chapter 372: House Velestana
The Eternal Crusader and its escort fleet forcefully dropped out of the Warp, returning to the cold, silent material universe.
The brief safety of navigation did not bring any relaxation; emergency damage assessments and vox-communications rapidly commenced.
The intelligence gathered made Sigismund and Ryo immediately realize that the crisis just now was not an isolated incident.
The fleet's vox-channels were filled with chaos and grim reports: the Navigators on the other escort vessels had also experienced varying degrees of loss of control and mutation at almost the exact same time.
Reports of frantic psychic shrieks, internal firefights, and brief but intense descriptions of mutations painted a picture of a fleet-wide disaster.
Fortunately, aside from the Eternal Crusader, the crews and accompanying battle-brothers on the other ships had ultimately succeeded in controlling and even eliminating the fallen Navigators on their respective vessels, although the process was brutal and came at the cost of significant casualties.
However, two pieces of unfortunate news still arrived—two frigates had failed to drop out of the Warp successfully.
Their final signals vanished in the roiling energy turbulence; the fate of the ships and all souls aboard was already sealed.
The losses were severe.
The total collapse of the Navigator system meant that the entire fleet had completely lost the capability to safely conduct long-distance Warp travel until replacements could be found.
They were stranded in this unnamed sector.
Sigismund's face was as dark as water.
Standing on the bridge, he gazed at the sparse starlight outside the main viewer and rapidly issued orders: "Tally all losses and prioritize repairing structural damage to the warships. Issue a highest-priority astropathic broadcast contacting the nearest Imperial world; we need Navigators—at any cost."
Ryo's mechanical body stood quietly to the side, data streams surging silently behind his optical lenses.
He accessed the fleet's cogitator network, beginning to analyze the coordinates of the current sector and any potentially existing Imperial outposts or Mechanicus facilities, attempting to find the material universe coordinates needed to navigate to the nearest world hosting a Navigator House branch.
The star chart analysis rapidly completed by Ryo brought a crucial discovery: their location upon dropping out of the Warp was not entirely random. In a nearby star system, there happened to be a space station belonging to the Navigator House of Velestana.
This was undoubtedly a blessing amidst misfortune.
The fleet immediately adjusted its course and headed toward that star system.
The space station floated solitarily at the edge of the star system. Its architectural style carried the mysterious and insular aesthetic unique to the Navigator Houses; its massive observation domes and psychic amplifiers were faintly visible under the star's light.
The fleet halted at a safe distance on the outskirts of the space station.
In the name of the High Marshal of the Eternal Crusader and the Primarch Dorn, Sigismund sent an astropathic message to the space station, demanding they immediately provide at least one experienced Navigator to assist the fleet in continuing its vitally important journey to Holy Terra.
After the message was sent, came the wait.
On the bridge, both Sigismund and Ryo knew clearly that the other party could not possibly refuse a direct demand from the Primarch of the Imperial Fists, especially one bearing the mission of the Emperor's will.
But the Navigator Houses had always been renowned for being insular and elusive. No one could predict whether they would raise certain conditions, or if this process would encounter unexpected complications.
Time slipped away in the silent void, every second feeling somewhat drawn out.
Everyone's gaze was focused on the sensor feedback, waiting for the response from that silent space station.
The response from House Velestana came faster than expected.
An encrypted astropathic message was transmitted directly to the Eternal Crusader. Its content was concise and clear: inviting Sigismund and Magos Ryo to visit the space station in person.
There were no superfluous pleasantries, nor did it mention specific conditions for providing a Navigator.
This in itself seemed somewhat unusual.
After a brief discussion, Sigismund and Ryo decided to accept the invitation.
A highly capable escort squad personally led by Sigismund, along with Ryo's massive mechanical body, boarded a Thunderhawk gunship, departed the battleship, and headed toward that Navigator space station suspended solitarily in the void.
The internal structure of the space station was filled with a style completely different from Imperial warships or Mechanicus facilities. The corridors wound like a maze, the lighting was dim, and the walls were decorated with incomprehensible psychic symbols.
They were led to a vast space resembling an audience chamber.
The one receiving them there was not an ordinary representative or elder of the House, but the current "Holy Son" of the House.
This Holy Son wore luxurious and bizarre attire. His forehead was covered by a headband inlaid with gemstones, beneath which lay that tightly closed Third Eye brimming with power.
His posture carried an innate nobility, as well as a certain inhuman sense of detachment.
As the individual with the purest bloodline and most powerful psychic potential within House Velestana, the Holy Son was generally viewed as the future Patriarch and spiritual leader. His personal appearance undoubtedly indicated the level of importance the House attached to this matter.
Ryo's sensors silently recorded every detail of the Holy Son.
He knew that to maintain their unique psychic talents and the Third Eye, Navigators had to strictly practice endogamy within the Houses.
Any union with outsiders, especially with ordinary humans lacking psychic potential, resulted either in the birth of mortal offspring with no special traits, diluting the bloodline; or, under the interference of Chaos, the gestation of indescribable, blasphemous abominations.
Based on past research, he was certain in his heart that Navigators were essentially a specialized psychic human subspecies, specifically engineered through genetic technology during the Dark Age of Technology, their genome intentionally modified to meet the needs of Warp navigation.
However, the long era of Old Night had buried too much knowledge. Even the Navigators themselves, over ten thousand years of continuous contact with the Warp, had inevitably had their genetic sequences eroded and twisted, becoming increasingly unstable. Their appearance also increasingly deviated from a pure human form, tending toward the unspeakable.
The Holy Son before his eyes was living proof of this contradictory combination of "purity" and "mutation."
The Holy Son stood quietly in the center of the audience chamber. The gemstone headband on his forehead gave off a faint gleam in the dim light, beneath which lay the Third Eye that sustained the fate and power of the House.
His gaze—those eyes that seemed to harbor the trajectories of the sea of stars—calmly passed over Sigismund and finally landed on Ryo's massive mechanical body.
There were no pleasantries, no probing. When this heir of House Velestana spoke, his voice carried an inhuman ethereal quality, yet pointed straight to the core: "Magos Ryo, we know of the revolution you bring. I shall ask only once, and I require only one truthful answer—when the new method of navigation spreads across the Imperium, where shall our kind... the Navigators, belong? In the future star charts you envision, will there still be a place for Velestana?"
(End of Chapter)