"Sudden asteroid debris off the port side! Evasive action!"
"Why didn't the augur arrays pick it up earlier?"
"No idea. Maybe the machine spirit was displeased..."
Under Solomon's brilliant helmsmanship, the Spear of Destiny barely avoided a space rock that scraped past the port side by a hair.
After confirming again and again that there was no more flying junk or giant augur-stealth asteroids nearby, the mentally exhausted Solomon practically crawled out of the bridge.
This ship had been cursed lately. In his entire life, he had never piloted anything this hard to handle.
Recently, not only had all sorts of random space debris and massive asteroids kept appearing in their path, but important instruments and systems had also been malfunctioning all the time.
Worst of all, on several occasions it had felt like the ship's previous captains were wrestling him for control of the helm.
If he had not reacted with absolute decisiveness and directly ordered the power from the engine room cut to force a physical stop, they would have crashed long ago.
Solomon rubbed his aching temples and, exhausted, rode the lift down to the upper deck.
The upper deck, with its solemn marble inner walls, was a fine place to live, though only the most valuable personnel were allowed to stay there. Ordinary crewmen were packed below like ants in lower decks whose environment was comparable to the Underhive.
Still, in a certain sense, the lower decks of a small destroyer like the Spear of Destiny counted as a good place, aside from the occasional loss of power or oxygen.
On larger ships, only the gods knew what kinds of monsters lurked in the lower decks.
In a very real sense, the lower decks of those great ships were even more dangerous than the Underhive.
After every Warp voyage, many people would be missing from the lower decks of those larger vessels.
And sometimes, there would be more people than before...
Thinking of Warp travel, Solomon's eyes drifted toward a certain section deep within the upper deck.
The Navigator Sanctum.
Navigators were a special kind of psyker. They were born with a strange ability to sense the currents of the Warp, and they could see the holy light of the Astronomican blazing from Holy Terra, using it to guide a ship's course.
They were the vessel's navigation system, humanity's pathfinders in the Warp, and for that they bore a nearly cursed burden.
As for what that burden actually was, Solomon did not know.
After all, his ship did not have a Navigator...
...
"What? Your ship doesn't have a Navigator?"
Gaia stared in disbelief at Magos Lena, the "genetor" currently operating the med-station to save the seven-tenths-cooked Horne.
This woman, who looked like she did not have several pounds of flesh on her entire body, silently nodded along with the servo-skull floating behind her.
"The Spear of Destiny does not have a Navigator."
"Then how do you travel through the Warp?"
Lena deftly peeled away Horne's charred skin and used a synthetic-skin applicator to create a temporary pathogen barrier over him, answering in a mechanical voice devoid of emotion:
"In fact, ever since Harlock formally took command of this vessel, I have never once seen her pass through the Warp. He uses only basic sublight travel."
"A pity. Her machine spirit is highly unusual and exceptionally skilled at finding the correct route through the Warp."
"Omnissiah be praised. This is the blessing of the Machine God."
"Just like her beautiful name, she pierces the veil of fate like a spear, and under the guidance of the Machine God, naturally finds a safe course."
Lena seemed to admire this greatly, so much so that while operating on Horne, she could not help reciting a sacred binary hymn.
Gaia's mouth twitched.
After all that nonsense, the entire explanation could be summed up in one sentence:
Because they had no Navigator, they did not dare use the Warp.
This was no longer just a pirate ship.
This was practically a wreck that somehow had not crashed yet.
Gaia held her forehead. Solomon's dramatic rescue earlier had left her with the impression that he was reliable.
But now, whether he was even as reliable as an Ogryn was open to debate.
And on top of that, his ship had no proper medical officer, only a mysteriously sourced genetor doubling as ship's doctor.
Gaia even suspected that Magos Lena was using the wounded crew as test subjects for some experiment the "oil-blooded" priesthood would consider sacred.
Just as the desire to complain in her heart swelled like a tide, Solomon, having come to the upper deck to rest a while in the captain's quarters, happened to arrive in the area.
"Well? How's life aboard my ship?"
Looking at Solomon's smiling face, Gaia's eyelids twitched.
She took a deep breath and, clinging to a last sliver of hope, asked:
"Your ship really doesn't have a Navigator?"
Solomon flashed a confident smile.
"It will."
"...An astropath, then?"
"It will."
"A pilot?"
"I humbly serve as both captain and pilot."
"A medical officer?"
"Lena is a professional genetor. As long as she doesn't get creative, patching us up is no problem at all."
"An enginseer?"
"Lena is a professional Tech-Priest, so naturally that's also her."
Under Gaia's gaze, every time Solomon answered one of her questions, another glowing knot of guilt appeared in his soul.
By the end of the interrogation, Solomon practically looked like a giant humanoid disco light.
If at first Gaia had only felt deep suspicion toward him, now she found herself feeling a strange sort of admiration.
To have run a ship like this for so many years without disaster either meant he had luck blessed by heaven or he actually had real skill.
Looking at Solomon, who wore a face of confidence while inwardly sweating under every question, Gaia let out a long sigh.
Forget it. At this point, she did not seem to have any real chance of getting off this pirate ship anyway.
Just as she was about to stop making things hard for him, a thought flashed through her mind.
Up until now, she had never truly figured out what era she was living in.
After all, the chronotower of the temporal authorities stood above the hive city, and she had never once had a chance to see such a place.
So far, all of her guesses about the date had been based on stories told by Old Bill.
"You know the date, at least, right? What year is it now?"
The moment she asked that, Solomon gave her a strange look.
After a moment, he stroked his little mustache and replied slowly:
"I don't remember the exact month and day, but this year is 200.M36. That much I know for sure."
The moment she heard that date, Gaia felt her head start buzzing.
What the hell? 200.M36?
At that time... did that mean...
Holding onto the last sliver of hope, she asked, her voice slightly shaky:
"And the current Ecclesiarch is?"
Solomon narrowed his eyes, gave the faintly panicked Gaia a meaningful look, raised his voice slightly, and said each word clearly:
"Goge Vandire."
"That was in a sector-wide announcement not long ago. The former Ecclesiarch, Paulis III, was executed for treason, and Chancellor Vandire has taken the Ecclesiarch's seat as well."
Those words struck Gaia's mind like a warhammer, instantly raising towering waves and making her soul itself let out a silent scream.
It meant that she was now right in the middle of the most catastrophic civil war the Imperium of Man had suffered since Horus's great betrayal.
Its name:
The Age of Apostasy.
(End of Chapter)
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