Due to certain events in real life, I'll have to put this temporarily on hold. I will get back to it, though.
3.7
+++
I would like to say that I came up with a plan of sheer brilliance. That I, with a single fell swoop, banished the Warp Storm and opened the path into the greater galaxy.
I did not.
I would like to say that I came up with a plan as elegant as it was cunning. That I made short work of the great task ahead of me, and cut my way through the storm with graceful speed.
I did not.
My plan was simple, straightforwards, and about as subtle as a meteor screaming through the sky surrounded by an aura of fire and the roar of thunder.
See, there was one thing about the 'drill a hole' plan that made it...
questionable.
Our Warp Storm?
It was big. It covered a significant sector of space. More, in fact, than a single star system. It covered about sixty three light years, as far as we were able to tell.
The 'drill a hole' plan called for me to basically tunnel through the Warp Storm. Now, to do this at less than light speed?
That'd take a long time.
We'd be there for centuries, at best.
But that was the thing. 'Do it at less than light speed'.
Why was it necessary to do that?
Because I couldn't use my FTL to get out. My FTL method relied on wormholes, pinching and folding space until I created a gaping hole that led to somewhere else in the universe. I could do it fairly easily, honestly; even a single Harbinger could rip a wormhole that was dozens of kilometers across with relative ease. It was surprisingly efficient; enough that most Alphas could rip a fairly short-ranged wormhole by themselves. Timaeus could get anywhere on the planet if he wanted, and while he was quite exceptional, it didn't take
that many people to match his raw energy output.
Problem was? Outside of our little bubble of calm, there was functionally no difference between realspace and Warpspace. Opening up a wormhole from the inside to anywhere inside was fine, because it was all normal space. It was sensible and followed rules and logic. Opening a Wormhole that crossed outside, where space
stopped being normal and instead became inimically opposed to me?
Didn't work.
Which meant that I had to explore some other options.
FTL, in this universe, was not that easy.
And the details changed all the time, considering that Warhammer 40k was about as inconsistent and prone to retcons as superhero comic books.
Warp Drives were about the easiest way to do it, and were the primary, and pretty much only, way that Humanity got around before now.
That said, there were other ways. Necrons, depending on the edition, had access to even more advanced technology, and could either tunnel into the Webway, the Eldar's primary FTL method, access another extradimensional space that connected a plethora of gates together, the Pharos devices, or had Inertialess Drives, which basically just gave the finger to light speed limits and kept accelerating long after physics should have told them to stop.
I had no idea which one was actually true.
But, more than that, I had no idea how any of those worked. No Human in Sanctuary was even aware of their existence, and while Singleton
might know something related, he doesn't like to talk about his past. Thus, any hints of the science behind those methods may as well have not existed to me.
The Tau, again depending on the edition, had other methods. The first had been a Warp Drive but worse, since it didn't actually get you
into the Warp, just into the void between realspace and the Warp. That was called the Ether Drive, though occasionally
also the Gravitic Drive.
Later editions had never mentioned it again.
What
did get mentioned was the ZFR Horizon Accelerator Engine, which, as it turns out, is actually just near-light engine technology, and not actually FTL in its own right.
They did, however, get another FTL engine in the eighth edition, the AL-38 Slipstream Module. Which is basically a Warp Drive, except without Gellar Fields, and activating too many at once causes plot to happen by sending people into the Warp unprotected. Given the former, it was a hilariously awful idea for anybody other than the Tau.
Given the latter, it was probably
actually a Warp Drive that the Tau don't realize is a proper Warp Drive.
Not useful, in other words, given how the Warp and I were in a love-hate relationship.
The
Orks actually had another. Some sort of galactic-scale teleportation system that could move moons, if needed.
Unfortunately, it shows up all of once, and only when the Orks are beginning to verge on
Krorks, when the Beast has become and thing.
Even more unfortunately, I had no idea how they did that, and with no clues to how it might work, it was basically pointless to me.
There was, however, another type of FTL.
The Tyranid's version. A gravitational-based spatial compression that locks on to the gravity of distant star systems and enables their Hive Fleets to reach them with something approaching reasonable speed, even if it was basically useless once you were
inside the system. It was, furthermore, quite recent in the editions, at only fifth and not having been replaced.
Now, that?
That was interesting to me.
Because I?
I pointed and
laughed at gravity. A Siren could pluck a plane right out of the sky. A Tether Spike could crush them outright. A Dirge could fling a singularity like a softball. My fleet-shapes?
They could do so much more than all of that.
And that was
before I learned more about space, time, gravity, and energy from my Symbiont hosts.
So if something like that was possible?
And if those bugs could do it, with their much lesser capabilities?
Then so could I.
I had spent
decades lingering on that. Testing, refining, searching for the way...
Ironically, the first things I actually came across were things that would have been extremely useful... If we weren't in the Warp Storm.
I figured out the Tyranid's actual method pretty easily. The thing about it was, as I said, that it required 'locking on' to the target's gravity, utilizing it to help scrunch up space between you and the destination. The process messed with the target's gravity, resulting in weird things happening. My tests used the moon as the subject, and by the end... I'd like to say that it was even more messed up, but I took a few bites out of all the Warp Energy inundating it, so it was probably actually
more stable, not less.
Did that help us get out?
Not a chance. There was
nothing to lock on to, thanks to the Warp Storm. And space wasn't particularly consistent, regardless.
After that came inspiration from the Tau. I'd open a rift, but wouldn't go completely into the Warp, just the void between the Warp and realspace-
And it had failed there because
there was no gap in the middle of the Warp Storm. I completed it anyway, because it was useful enough for getting around inside of a system, but in getting through the Storm, it wasn't going to help.
What I needed was bigger than all of that. I needed to
punch my way through. I needed to be able to cross light years while just
forcing my way through the storm, smashing aside all that Warp Energy.
Eventually, I succeeded.
It caused a bit of a stir, though. Humanity learned almost as much from my experimentation as I did, and while they couldn't
quite replicate my wormholes technologically, the other methods could be achieved.
Retrofitting had taken a while.
Regardless, now we take that knowledge, and come back to the 'drill a hole' plan to apply it.
How was I going to get us out of here in a reasonable amount of time?
Simple. Take the fleet. Get it as close together as possible. Let their Gellar Fields and other anti-Warp technologies overlap and synergize, providing stability even in the walls of the Warp Storm itself. Wrap it in the Silence for further safety. Have my Harbinger selves, by now more than a hundred strong, form a loose spherical grid around the fleet. Leave the rest of my fleet-selves to intermingle with the rest of the Compact fleet, strengthening the core of the Silence.
And, at the front and the back of the entire cluster, have a pair of particularly special fleet-shapes. Larger things than most anything else, rivalling even the Lightchasers in size.
Go forwards, slowly, to the edge of the Storm. Drink in the energies of the Warp, let my stomach and reserves fill...
And then, put those two two fleet-shapes to use. They form a bubble of energy, a loose polyhedron of uneven faces around the entire fleet, glowing brightly and 'locking' the fleet into physical position, keeping them stationary relative to each other.
The next three steps are simultaneous. The one at the front grips space-time ahead and shrinks it, compressing it. The one at the back grips space-time behind and expands it. The entirety of my fleet-selves then create an inertial wave, just to get us going.
The solution? Alcubierre that bitch.
The planet vanishes in less time than it takes to blink. My energy reserves plummet from full to almost nothing in eight seconds flat.
The unsubtly shows here; travelling through the Warp Storm like this has approximately the same effect as a plough through snow.
It goes everywhere. Warp Energy, previously just sort of swirling around chaotically, was violently shoved outwards in an expanding wave of raw power, sufficient enough to slap away even the faces staring at the things they couldn't see. What's left behind is empty and sensical space. For about ten seconds, the trail we've left is visible, and the planet is a long distant speck, but the Warp Storm is quick to fill the emptiness.
For the brief period that it's visible, I can calculate the distance we've travelled. Slightly more than eight light hours in about as many seconds.
Was it effective? Yes. I'd forced my way through the Warp Storm, crossed a significant amount of distance with ease. I had, even more importantly, actually
cleared the space, separating Warp from reality and thus making our bubble a new anchor point.
Was it elegant? Hardly. It was the equivalent of using a bomb to drive a nail through a particularly stubborn piece of wood. In fact, it was worse, because I wasn't anywhere near done. I needed to set off a lot more bombs.
Was it efficient? No. No no no.
Definitely not. That much energy lost that quickly couldn't possibly be called such a thing. Admittedly, the cost was mostly in pushing away all that Warp Energy, as travel otherwise was fairly efficient, most of it being in the start-up, but going through the Warp Storm?
Drained me of pretty much everything.
But that was the catch.
WARP STORM. Who cares about how much energy I'm using?
So long as I'm in here, it takes about thirty seconds to go back to full.
MUM, in the meantime, runs a check on all systems. She reports back that there is no damage to anything, to everybody's enthusiasm.
The moment I'm back to full, I start the process again. Space warps, and then we shoot forwards again, setting off another shockwave of Warp Energies as we smash through it. The faces flee.
I do it again.
And then again.
And then again.
And then again.
+++
A day passes. By then, mathematics says we've covered approximately two light years. Could be more, could be less, given the Warp Storm, but what I can definitely say is that the ambient energy level does drop. Slowly. And that probably means we've gotten closer to the edge.
So I continue. One day becomes two. Two becomes four. Four becomes eight. Eight becomes sixteen. The ambient levels drop more and more and more and more.
Sixteen days and fourteen hours later, we break through the edge.
It's easy to tell the exact moment. The utter inanity of Warp colours gives way to deep, sensible black. An instant later, and I'm collapsing the spatial warps, reacting as fast as I can. The universe snaps back into a normal view, and...
The sky is not just one big light, but countless tiny ones, massive and far distant. The song of gravity fills my ears, the taste of energy brushes against my tongue. The cosmos is open. Wide.
Free.
The fleet cheers. I am on every ship, one body standing in ever bridge. The sheer roar creates vibrations that echo throughout all of them, drowning out all other noise. The joy of it colours reality.
It takes a bit to die down.
Lucy leans back in her chair, flanked by Singleton to her left and Timaeus to her right, with myself a little behind her. The latter is smiling, and though the former lacks a face to express it with, there's no denying the joyful air surrounding him in the same way it does everybody else.
"So..." Timaeus says, looking at the screen. "These are stars."
"I was just a little girl the last time I saw them." Lucy says. Her voice is... steady. But there's no denying the underlying feelings, there. "I remember that I used love staring at them, looking through my scope. I never thought that one day, they'd be taken away from us."
She looked to the side for a moment, before turning, her chair spinning to face me. She stood up, and in a single, fluid motion, wrapped her arms around me.
"
Thank you." She said, lowly, filled with raw emotion.
I hug back, patting her back a few times. She lets go, after a few seconds, a smile on her face. She just about falls into her chair, spinning around slowly.
The smile doesn't fade.
"What do you think, Timaeus?" She asks. "Now that you can finally see them in something more than a record."
"It's like looking at a billion glittering jewels." He doesn't take his eyes away. "More wondrous than I dared imagine."
Lucy chuckles.
Then, she waves a hand. MUM responds immediately, projecting a hologram of the fleet, formation beginning to collapse even now. It zooms out, after a moment, distance marked with a grid of faint lines.
A mass of red marks the Warp Storm. We're still sitting pretty much just on the edge of it, in cosmic terms, and the borders of it are a bit vague, as the sensor arrays can't get an exact positioning on it, but that's fine.
We're not looking to go back in there.
A small point of light appears on the holomap, quickly followed by more. After a few seconds, information begins to stream next to them, telling details about the stars in question.
Lucy looks over them, taking in the information. She raises a hand, and then pauses.
"Timaeus." She says, catching the Primarch's attention. "The whole reason this effort got started in the first place is because of you. I think you deserve first pick."
"The closest." He answers immediately.
Closest, huh. It's... a small one. A red dwarf, I'd say.
MUM zooms in on the target. And, yep, a long stream of numbers given to an unnamed star, M-Class, two point three light years away, and just another of the countless multitudes.
Still, even that's a bounty. It's a lot more than what we've had before.
"Closest it is." Lucy leans back, her seat turning so she can direct a look at me. "Are we going the fast way?"
I'm a bit low on energy... We'd punched out about six seconds through a jump, and that had left me low. Really low, honestly. I'll probably eat afterwards, but I have enough.
It takes basically no effort to send an affirmation. Lucy's connection with me is quite strong.
She nods. I move a Harbinger-self forward.
"This is Admiral Tak to all ships." She speaks, her voice strong. "We're preparing to cross. Get ready to make the transition."
A chorus of agreements makes its way back, the various captains giving their affirmations.
I gather what remains of my reserves. The star is there, in my senses. Gravity draws the line for me to follow, offering the path I need...
I concentrate. Energy flows together, condensing into a single point. The singularity forms in a moment, eating light and warping space. I give it a vector, and then I shift my energy into the negatives, forcing it into physically anomalous and
naturally impossible patterns, thus creating a concentration of something that
should be self-repulsive. It's a paradox that's impossible and something that should never be able to happen.
A sane and logical universe does not like paradoxes. It tries to resolve it, and, by design, there is a way for it to be resolved.
The singularity inverts. A spatially singular point transforms into a path, a connection between here and somewhere else. The vector determines direction, the energy contained within determines distance, and so, I
puncture space itself, opening the portal to the intended destination.
It's a wormhole. Simple, direct, and very useful. On the other side, I can taste the energy of the star, suddenly within reach. It's small, but I can fix that, focusing more energy and forcing it a bit wider, creating a storm of power surrounding it. My aim had been good, so I open it wider, stretching a hole that had started as a tiny, insignificant thing into something that spans hundreds of kilometers.
Plasma engines ignite, propelling the Lightchasers and their attendants forwards. I follow, leisurely.
Ah... Freedom is sweet.
