After she sent the message, Aleya moved further through the chambers of the basilica, looking for anything she could either use or take with her. Far above where she was right now, she faintly heard heavy crashes and the shouts of humans. These were search teams of the Adeptus Arbites, the planet's law enforcement, looking to find out what warranted an attack by the Black Legion.
The last chamber she checked was Lokk's, the old Astropath.
How proud he had been when he had been given a vision from the Emperor himself. He had never experienced more pain, but it was still his proudest moment. And if he had burned from the sheer minuscule thought of the Emperor, he would have died with a smile.
Lokk had served Hestia and the enclave loyally and dutifully for nearly 20 years. As an Astropath, his life so close to Pariahs was one of torture. Psykers experience the effects of Blanks far more profoundly than normal humans do. And yet, he had remained true to his duty and had never wavered.
Aleya didn't find the body of Lokk, but there was a long slick of blood along the far wall. The small room he used had been smashed and burnt. She tried to find anything useful, anything that might help her or give her information about those of her sisters she hadn't seen among the corpses, like Hestia.
Aleya couldn't understand the list of psychic runes or astrological charts and so turned to leave again. But as she did, she saw a sentence on the door, written in blood.
'He calls His daughters Home.'
It was written in the private language they used, which to an untrained eye would look nothing like regular writing.
Aleya was torn. She couldn't really believe what she read. Was it true? What was she supposed to do? She wished Hestia were there to give her confidence and tell her what to do.
Aleya felt alone as she stood in the ruin of the only home she had ever known. Sadly, she wasn't given time to grieve, as the search party of the Adeptus Arbites were approaching. Having decided, Aleya made her way through the complex, towards the hangar before they arrived.
First, she would get back to the enclave's transport ship, the Cadamara, which she was using and get out of range of Arraissa. Then she would plan her next move and think it through clearly. There were many possibilities.
.
.
The Imperium was under enormous pressure right now. The dangers lurking just beneath the surface of realspace had grown to unimaginable degrees, and all that separated the chaotic, malicious currents of the Warp and the wider galaxy was one single planet.
Cadia.
But why?
Following the death of Horus and the defeat of the Traitor Legions at the Battle of Terra in the 32nd Millennium, the remaining loyal armies of the Imperium pressed their advantage and sought to drive out the remaining traitor forces from Imperial territory. This period, known as The Scouring, saw the broken and beaten Traitor Legions pushed from their strongholds and homeworlds.
Ultimately, the majority of the traitors were compelled to retreat into a massive Warp rift in reality known as the Eye of Terror. This permanent Warp storm spans approximately 20,000 light-years and serves as a nexus of psychic energy and physical spacetime, where the Immaterium coexists with realspace.
There, the traitors found some refuge from the Imperial armies that would not pursue them into the Eye. Forced to make their new homes right there, inside the Eye of Terror, the Traitor Astartes became truly corrupted by the influence of the Dark Gods, transforming them into the Chaos Space Marines.
By the time they entered the Eye, the organisation and hierarchy of the Traitor Legions had been thoroughly shattered. Instead of the rigid structure and discipline of the previous loyalist legions, the Chaos Space Marines were governed by warlords who gained power solely through might.
While some legions maintained more cohesion than others, ultimately, a Chaos Lord and their warband were only as powerful as the strength of their warriors and the resources they controlled within the Eye. To survive there, Chaos Lords needed to constantly wage war, make deals, and prove their mettle in the eyes of the Chaos Gods.
Leaving the Eye of Terror was no easy feat. The laws of reality were warped, particularly the unnatural flow of time, which meant that many veterans of the Horus Heresy were still around in the present, ten thousand years later, though to them it may feel as if far less time had passed.
While Chaos Warbands occasionally struck out from the Warp in small numbers, launching great Chaos fleets from the Eye was much more difficult. The abnormal laws of nature in the Eye were a very risky endeavour, requiring extensive planning and resources to execute successfully.
Through cunning and violence, a Chaos Marine Warlord may accumulate enough power to attempt a breakout from the Eye and strike out at the Imperium beyond. There, in the Imperium, much-needed resources were more abundant, captives could be taken for sacrifice or enslavement, and warriors of Chaos could unleash their hatred against the Imperium in the name of the Dark Gods, for personal glory, or to settle old grudges.
Thus, a Chaos Lord gathered their warband, called in every favour, and launched an assault from the Eye of Terror into the Imperium of Man, often bringing hell along with them.
These campaigns were known as the Black Crusades. Leading one is the pinnacle of power for a Chaos Space Marine. The effects of a Black Crusade on a sector of space were devastating.
Many Chaos Space Marine Warlords have led their own Black Crusades, carving paths of death and corruption in their wake, each costing the Imperium dearly to repel. The most notable Black Crusades were those led by Abaddon the Despoiler, the Warmaster of Chaos and master of the Black Legion.
.
Abaddon had led twelve different Black Crusades against the Imperium, each causing significant turmoil. Some attacks were massive invasions, composed of cultists, daemons, beastmen, and Astartes, while others were smaller coordinated strikes involving a select group of Abaddon's most trusted warriors.
Each of these twelve Black Crusades brought widespread destruction to the worlds near the Eye of Terror, weakening the defences around the Cadian Gate, and the Imperium ultimately repelled each one, yet at a great cost.
Each Black Crusade was not merely a military invasion but a strategic move in Abaddon's grand plan. For millennia, Imperial scholars believed the Black Crusades were failed attempts to break through the Cadian Gate and invade the Imperium properly. The terrible truth, however, would reveal itself with this 13th and final Crusade.
Each campaign had achieved exactly what Abaddon intended, weakening the barriers between realspace and the Warp and positioning assets for the final devastating blow.
.
.
Back on Ludos Prime, Hestia and the others rushed into the Instant Dungeon Gerhard and Hans used to build a functioning but very small transport for them to leave. The 10:1 time dilation helped immensely in saving time, relatively speaking.
Gerhard was nodding to the beat blasting from the subwoofer when Hestia cut off the music.
'An emergency! Arraissa was attacked! We need to leave, right now!!' she signed quicker than Gerhard had ever seen her.
It was so fast that it was hard for him to keep up, even after all this time. But he got it and narrowed his eyes.
"What happened?" he asked.
'A message ciphered in our special way, telling us to stay away as we had been attacked.'
"Who sent it?" Gerahrd asked.
'Aleya. I never got an alert or message like this before. The comm was working the entire time, I am sure of it. We need to return, RIGHT NOW!'
Hestia, the calmness in person and spirit, quite literally in fact, was visibly agitated and enraged. Someone had crossed a line of hers, and she was going to bring hell with her if she ever got the one responsible.
Gerhard looked at Lencillus, who observed his reaction. Then he looked at Hans and at the transporter he had created so far. He had to start from bloody scratch, and apart from Hans, he was doing it on his own, so it took time. Hell, they would be travelling through the Warp, that had to be done correctly and safely...
At least as safely as possible.
"I understand. I'll need another few weeks to finish all of this. We can't leave early. The constructs of the Orks didn't really help, and they destroyed all the flightworthy crafts there were in the Hive."
'Make it quicker. Stop messing around and get a bloody move on!' Hestia said and walked out.
Liora and Kaelen followed after her, while Lencillus looked at Gerhard. The Eye of the Emperor naturally knew that Gerhard wasn't slacking off, as he hadn't really done that for what was a month for him. Still, he respected Gerhard's power to remain cool and collected and think logically about it, even under the great boiling rage of Hestia and her desperation.
"I wasn't slacking, though."
"I am aware," Lencillus said.
H: > If we were slacking, I'm an Artificial Intelligence.
Both Gerhard and Lencillus narrowed their eyes at Hans.
H: > What?
...
A spaceship can enter the Warp by using Warp drives, which allow spacecraft to travel faster than the speed of light. This is possible because Warpspace is a realm of pure energy, where spacecraft can navigate through different streams, much as one would move through an ocean. The Imperium employs Navigators, a sub-race of humans, for this navigation.
The problem was as follows.
One, Gerhard didn't have a Navigator, and two, he didn't have a Warp drive either. All he had were Lencillus and Hans, who told him how a Warp drive worked and about the Orks' technology, with their Tellyport Blasta and Shokk Attack Guns. Gerhard was very thankful that they managed to get access to the Tech Priests' cogitator.
But even then, it took a long time. Warp drives were huge and bulky. Creating a voidship like that would take Gerhard months, if not years, even with all his skills.
Gerhard also had to create a Geller Field and a Plasma Drive, or some other way of pushing the spaceship forward. The Geller Field was especially important, allowing ships and their occupants to actually survive the hostile environment of the Warp. It protects the ship and its occupants from the Chaos dangers and Warp denizens you didn't want to invite inside.
In the Warp, time behaves differently from the material universe, often resulting in time stasis, acceleration, reversal, and other chaotic violations of the laws of physics. Although this method of travel was effective, it was far from perfect. Long-distance journeys could take months or even years, and the timing of these trips was unpredictable due to the nature of the Warp.
So Gerhard had a lot on his plate, and even if it seemed like it, he hadn't been slacking off. A person needed more than to slave his ass off all the time. However, as he was in Warhammer, he chose to suck it up and get to it.
.
Gerhard used the schematics of the Viper Class Scout Sloop. This was a model of a small reconnaissance and escort ship used by the Imperial Navy and was among the smallest Imperial starships capable of carrying a Warp Drive. They were mainly used for short-term spy missions targeting specific hostile regions.
They were usually 950 meters long, weighed 4.9 megatonnes, had a crew of 7,500, and accelerated to 6 gravities max. Overall, not what Gerhard was looking for. But what was he to do?
There was no crew apart from Hans and the others, but he had to fit the Warp drive, the Geller Field, the engine and... well, other things.
Never was Gerhard more thankful for his immense grinding in science skills. If he hadn't reached such insane levels as he had, he wouldn't have been able to understand, replicate and improve upon the Warp drive and Geller Field and make them considerably smaller and more efficient.
Hestia almost went crazy and pressed Gerhard more and more until she almost wanted to take the unfinished voidship and leave.
Not a great plan.
Gerhard and Hans managed to create a very small voidship. Very small in the sense that it wasn't even 500 meters long. But it had everything necessary for Warp travel, which should, in theory, allow them to reach Arraissa.
Now, he needed to find a way to get the different pieces into space and assemble them there. And to do that, he needed to dive into his Mana and create some skills.