Chapter 308: Startup Failed
Back on Secundus-496b, in Hive Tenebris, Enginseer Antonius was deep in his workshop, examining the salvaged wraithbone power armour, when an incoming comms request lit up his console.
He checked the source. Kian, calling in from deep space on the shuttle's long-range vox-link.
Antonius set down his tools and accepted the connection. A moment later, Kian's face filled the holo-projector.
"Father Antonius! I've got a ship refit opportunity here, not sure if it's worth investing in. Mind taking a look?"
Antonius rolled his eyes — a full, theatrical roll. He already knew exactly where this was going. Kian had come to him weeks ago asking for a vacuum-rated combat suit, and Antonius had had a sneaking suspicion it wasn't for sightseeing.
"What's the project? Turn it around, full rotation. Let me see."
Kian rolled the shuttle in a slow 360 around the hulk.
It wasn't really a hulk anymore. The layers of garbage armour — entire continent-sized slabs of welded scrap — had finally finished separating and drifted off into the void, leaving the human vessel at the core fully exposed.
Antonius's optical pickup zoomed in. His eyes — both real and augmetic — went wide.
"Omnissiah preserve us. A Sword-class escort!
Filthy, degenerate xenos scum, defiling a work of the Omnissiah's own hand — turning a vessel this elegant into a garbage heap!!"
His temperature gauge, metaphorically speaking, spiked hard. There was nothing a tech-priest hated more than seeing fine machinery defiled.
"So that's a Sword-class under there?" Kian asked. "What's the spec? How good is it?"
It took Antonius a moment to recover his composure. Then he launched into the briefing.
"The Sword-class escort is a common pattern, used widely by both the Navy and the Mechanicus. 2.2 kilometres long, 0.3 wide, 0.4 tall. Roughly 6.5 million tonnes displacement, crew complement of 30,000, capable of mounting nearly any standard Navy weapon system currently in production.
The Forge World right next door to us — Primo-496a — manufactures this exact class."
Kian's voice came back, openly excited.
"So can I fix it up and just... keep it?"
Antonius shook his head.
"You're sitting in the middle of absolutely nowhere, surrounded by greenskins and a debris field the size of a small moon. No infrastructure. No labour force.
Who's going to repair this for you? You've already told me the outer hull's been mangled by Ork modification — who knows what state the interior keel's in, and the engines are almost certainly gone."
"The internal gravity plating and atmosphere generation are both still functional," Kian said quickly.
That gave Antonius pause.
"That's something. It confirms the internal power conduits weren't destroyed, and the reactor's still online in some capacity.
But based on what I can see, the propulsion system is finished. Doesn't matter how much power you've got if you can't direct it anywhere. Show me the engines."
Kian swung the shuttle around to the stern and zoomed the camera on the massive drive section.
Antonius pointed at the screen.
"Look at that. Completely scorched. Outer structure's slumped from heat exposure on a massive scale — that's lance-fire, Aeldari pattern, almost certainly.
Don't bother hoping. Even with an intact keel and a functioning reactor, this ship is dead in the water without propulsion. That's a derelict, full stop."
Kian wasn't ready to let it go. He pressed.
"What if I found a way to get it to Primo-496a? Could they repair it there?"
Antonius nodded — and Kian's spirits lifted instantly — then shook his head a second later.
"From the structural integrity I'm seeing, and given the life-support's still active, the power systems are probably sound. Fine.
But how exactly are you proposing to move a 6.5-million-tonne vessel to the Forge World? Strap a few rockets to it?
And even assuming you somehow managed it — what price are you prepared to pay the Forge World to actually do the repairs? Do you have any idea what a refit job of this scale costs?
Do you have any idea how long a restoration like this would take, given the state it's in?"
Kian's expression soured progressively through this entire explanation.
"There has to be some way. Didn't you tell me you signalled a relic fleet out here for that Necron research project? Surely the tech-priests' relic fleet has something big enough to tow this back."
Antonius gave him a long, loaded look. Kian stared back, hopeful.
Maybe it was a rare flicker of conscience, but Antonius actually sighed and answered with unusual sincerity.
"Count Voss. A word of advice, free of charge.
The moment any faction capable of repairing this vessel arrives on the scene, this ship stops being yours. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
Kian blinked. Then it landed.
This was a warship. A Sword-class escort. Even gutted, even Ork-defiled, even with a dead Machine Spirit and a ruined drive train — it was still 6.5 million tonnes of ceramite, alloy, and adamantium keel. A genuine, irreplaceable strategic asset.
Just sitting there, unclaimed, it represented an almost unlimited amount of value. And any power with the means to either tow it away or repair it in place would absolutely not let that value walk away.
And Kian? In the eyes of a power like that? A minor noble on a backwater world. Get out of the way.
He sat in the cockpit, scratching his head hard enough to generate a small flurry of dandruff, working through the disappointment out loud.
A few minutes of internal debate later, something clicked.
If it's not going to be mine, fighting for it won't change that. A ship this size, if luck genuinely turned against him, wasn't something he could hold onto by force regardless of effort. Better to just let things play out. Maybe, somewhere down the line, an opportunity would come that let him bring this thing home properly.
The disappointment in his expression smoothed back out into something closer to neutral acceptance.
That's when he heard a groan from behind him.
The Astartes. The Regen-Bolt had done its work — the giant was waking up.
On the projector, Antonius was still talking, trying to drive the point home.
"Bottom line: don't get attached. This is a warship, an enormous fortune sitting in open space, and you genuinely do not have the means to claim it, Count Voss. Let it go. If a power capable of repairing this vessel shows up, do not — under any circumstances — get in their way. You will be erased."
Kian waved a hand dismissively, expression flat, and stood up.
"Yeah, yeah, got it, got it. Gotta go — that Astartes I picked up just woke up."
"Wait — what did you say you picked up—"
Click.
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