Chapter 334: Aboard the Cruiser
A shuttlecraft climbed from the planet's surface into the void, threaded through the fleet formation, and docked inside the largest vessel — the Dauntless-class cruiser.
The enormous warship housed a full suite of advanced artificial gravity and atmospheric systems. Anyone who got close enough to inspect the hull would notice that many of the ship's deck plates weren't sealed — you could actually see crew members standing on the outer decks without any protective gear whatsoever.
That was the atmospheric pressure system at work, generating a breathable air envelope around the ship's exterior. It made carrier operations remarkably convenient: flight deck ports could stay open permanently, and ground crew didn't have to worry about being sucked into the vacuum.
The shuttlecraft glided into the warship's interior hangar and settled onto the deck.
The ramp dropped. Kian stepped out with his entourage in tow.
If Inquisitor Trasolh was a king, then Kian's position was that of a sworn vassal — entitled to recruit and maintain his own retinue.
Silentium, Little Joel, Shiv, Parson, the Traffic Light Trio, Lieutenant Rudolphson — all of them had volunteered to follow him into the void when they heard he was leaving.
The Traffic Light Trio's families were mid-to-lower tier Spire nobility with access to better information than most. The three family heads could see the writing on the wall: a hundred years of debt repayment might well mean their bloodlines' extinction.
So the patriarchs had made a calculated decision — send their heirs into space to scatter the family seed among the stars. Maybe these three useless boys would actually amount to something under an Inquisitor's banner.
And since the trio already knew Kian, the path was obvious: swear into his service as retainers.
Rudolphson was a different case. He hadn't volunteered — he'd been selected as part of the first blood-tithe intake, conscripted into the Astra Militarum. But Kian and Rudolphson went back a long way, and the Guard's mortality rates were atrocious. Kian had simply asked the Inquisitor to transfer him over as a personal retainer instead.
Whatever their individual capabilities, the loyalty of this group was beyond question.
The galaxy was vast. They'd left home with no guarantee of ever returning. Fellow countrymen became your only anchor, your only source of emotional grounding. Betrayal wasn't in the cards.
Over time, Kian would develop their abilities and turn them into real assets.
In addition to his retainers, Kian had brought three thousand elite soldiers in powered armour and twelve Leman Russ battle tanks.
These were Kian's private troops — his personal military force, outside the Inquisitor's chain of command entirely.
Flying into the galaxy meant opportunities would arise. When they did, three thousand private soldiers would be the sharp edge he needed to seize them.
Kian led his retinue down the shuttlecraft ramp and onto the flight deck, drawing stares from every direction.
The ship's deck crew watched the newcomers with undisguised envy.
First impressions mattered. Showing up at your new posting looking sharp was non-negotiable.
Ten suits of heavy master-crafted powered armour. Heavy-barrel lasrifles. Bolt carbines. Fully automatic grenade launchers.
Kian had kitted his people out to the nines. Standing in formation, the group looked like a budget Terminator squad.
Nova sauntered over, swept a glance across the lavish equipment loadout, and snorted.
"Country money. Follow me. By order of Inquisitor Trasolh, I'm to familiarise you with the Staff of Censure."
Nova walked ahead in her sleek, form-fitting light power armour, trailed by a clanking procession of oversized tin cans.
She narrated as she walked, dripping with pride:
"The Staff of Censure. Dauntless-class cruiser. Sixty 5,000-millimetre macro-cannons per broadside, plus thirty lance batteries on each flank.
Twelve super-heavy turrets mounted dorsally, each housing a single high-output lance.
Twenty-four bow torpedo tubes, 8,000-millimetre bore. Capable of launching nuclear torpedoes, boarding torpedoes, gas torpedoes, and a variety of other ordnance types.
One hundred and twenty-four drop pods on the ventral hull, capable of deploying three thousand troops to a planetary surface in a single wave.
Internal hangars house twelve void-capable strike fighters and twenty-four shuttlecraft. Six oversized Devourer-class atmospheric transports are externally racked.
Total crew complement: seventy thousand. Forty-five thousand ship's crew handle vessel operations. Five thousand are administrative, medical, and Mechanicus support staff. The remaining twenty thousand are Inquisitor Trasolh's direct military forces."
Kian absorbed every word as he followed Nova deeper into the warship, touring compartment after compartment.
He walked the macro-cannon and lance battery decks. The weapons themselves were terrifying — five-metre bore diameters, mounted on vast, intricate mechanical assemblies.
Each gun deck occupied a space a hundred metres on a side and required hundreds of crew to operate. Every shot from those barrels was a feat of coordinated labour.
A single broadside salvo hurled thousands of tonnes of ordnance at the enemy, inflicting catastrophic, irrecoverable damage on anything it hit.
As for accuracy... well. Anyone familiar with void warfare understood. It was musket-line tactics scaled up to interstellar dimensions. Hit rates were a function of volume, not precision.
The lances, on the other hand, never missed. They fired coherent energy beams — point, shoot, hit. As long as the targeting solution was good, the shot landed.
The trade-off was that lance strikes didn't carry the same raw destructive punch as hundreds of kilograms of high explosive. Back when the Aeldari warship had used its lances against Ork junk-ships, it had taken days of sustained fire to chew through a single vessel. That was the limitation.
Lances were primarily harassment weapons — their guaranteed-hit property forced enemy warships to keep void shields raised at all times, draining power reserves.
By the time Kian had finished the full tour, he had a solid grasp of the Inquisitor's flagship. And the wanting was almost physical — he was practically drooling.
He'd already started fantasising about what it would feel like if this ship were his.
But he reeled the daydream back in. He was a freelance void-deputy now. He'd taken the job; time to do the work. He asked about his actual duties.
"Hey, kitty cat — when does the fleet move out? Where are we headed? And what exactly does the chief deputy do around here?"
Nova bared her teeth at him.
"Don't call me 'kitty cat'! That's Inquisitor Trasolh's pet name for me, and his alone!
As for your duties — mrow heh heh. Inquisitor Trasolh says you're 'worth it.' I'm not so sure about that.
Lucky for us, the Astropath will have the navigation route plotted by tomorrow. After that, we enter the Warp.
Your job is to patrol the ship and make sure nothing... unusual... gets inside.
Mrow heh heh! Try not to wet yourself when the time comes, mrow heh heh!"
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