Editing Story:Pax Imperialis (section)

== First Contact ==

“TO: Commander Vyn, hon. master of ''Pax Imperalis''<br>
FROM: Vice-Admiral Jannik Loren

You are to take your vessel to sub-sector 33.1 A-Obscura. An enemy reaver (DESIGNATED: ''End of Days'') has been sighted in this region and presents an unacceptable risk to chartist shipping. You are to BURN, VENT, or take her as a PRIZE.”

-Transmitted 411.M41
Received by [[Astropath]] Krern

At the tail end of the dog watch, the ''Pax Imperialis'' was tended only by midshipmen – whose education was better served at night shifts than day shifts – the common voidmen – whose labor never ceased, even at night – and by the tech-priests whose communion with their Machine God was pure enough to transcend the need for sleep. The rest of the ship – the gun crew, the armsmen, the underofficers, the astromancers, the tech-wrights and armorers, the twistcatchers and the able voidmen – they slept in hammocks, by their work stations, in quarters both spacious and cramped alike (depending on their station, ranks in the nobility and various comissional benefits).

However, none of them slept as poorly as her commander.

For, on the tail end of the dog watch, Commander Vyn was trying to strangle her pillow in her sleep.

Rata-tata-tata-tat!

The harsh percussion of a snare drum snapped her out of old memories and she sat up, her hair a poorly kempt blond explosion that she had to brush aside to see beyond the tip of her nose. The luminators in her quarters came to flickering life and the door burst open as Sub-Ensign 3rd Class Drexler Hue ran in, carrying her coat, gloves, cap, baton, scabbard, monomolecular sword and hellpistol. He tripped over his own foot and crashed to the ground, sending the whole pile clattering across the floor. The only thing that didn’t land on the ground was the cap, which Vyn caught with a tattooed arm and shoved onto her head.

“Ensign!” She glared at him. 

Idiot. She thought to herself, walking down the corridor that separated her quarters from the bridge. The alarms that continued to rattle through the ship were as comfortingly familiar as they were worrying: The Beat to Quarters indicated the need be ready for potential battle. The alarm for an actual call to arms-stations was quite a bit more strident. And, at the dog’s watch, potentially lethal: Even the most disciplined crew in the Navy would be hard pressed to ready themselves in less than a half hour.

Hue followed behind her, speaking quickly. “Lt. Desna was on hand as senior watch officer. She sounded off, and so, I fetched you.”

Vyn nodded, sliding her coat on. Crew – mostly underofficers heading from their quarters to their postings throughout the ship – stepped to the side and saluted to her. The new ones stopped to stare: With a crew complement of twenty seven thousand souls, it was easy for even a lieutenant (especially one not assigned to the bridge) to go months into a voyage without seeing their Commander. Vyn paid them no mind.

''It is only those who don’t learn to deal with it that I can waste annoyance on'', she thought. She came to the door of the bridge. It opened and she took a moment to survey the familiar sight: The command pits, the cogitators, the wall mounted servitor calculance monitors, the sweeping vista-plates. As of now, there was nothing much to see in the void behind, nothing visible to the eye, save for the star of the system (as of yet unnamed) and the pale purple marble that was the system’s major gas giant, the only planet within visual range.

Vyn stepped briskly towards the command plinth – which jutted two meters above the rest of the bridge – and clambered up the side ladder. She arrived and found Lt. Commander Victor Janus already there, drinking a cup of recaff. He looked like death.

“Good morning, Janus.” 

“There is something good about it, ma’am?” He asked. Vyn grinned as she stepped to the edge of the command plinth. She looked down at the auspex pit. The curved trench line was entirely staffed by the dog’s watch: mostly twelve and thirteen year old midshipmen, the sons and daughters of officers who had earned their birth commission, noble third-born who had gone into the Navy to get them out of the inheritance struggle, and the [[Schola Progenium]]. They stood at attention, looking up at her. Before them was Lieutenant Desna, their teacher (for the moment) and harsh taskmistress (for most of their lives if they did not acquit themselves in battle).

“At ease. Report.” Vyn called down. Lt. Desna did not relax. Instead, she kept her hands behind her back and shouted over the din of the bridge – the weapons supervisors were testing out their vox commands by bellowing at the macrocannon crews.

“I detected a heat flare in the gas giant designated OB-445. It struck me as suspicious.”

Vyn cocked a single eyebrow.

“According to the reports from the ships Carto-Artifex, this gas giant is cold and unusually stable. We should not have been able to detect a heat signature from it unless…” She trailed off.

“Unless a raider was hiding in there. Good work Desna.” Vyn turned to the left, shouting down to the helms crew. “Set course for the gas giant. Auspex’s, keep your eyes open. We don’t want to sail straight into a trap. Lt. Commander, I believe now would be a good time to begin loading the torpedoes.” 

Janus barely managed to cover up his yawn, even as he nodded. “Aye, ma’am.” He stood and slid off the plinth, hurrying across the bridge to the knot of officers that distributed orders through the prow torpedo decks. Janus had been promoted from those decks. He had a firmer handle on the titanic projectiles than most of the bridge crew, many of whom had originally served on ships of the line and worldbreaking battleships, handling more traditional weapons of war.

As orders started to filter throughout the ship, Vyn felt the rumbling of the deck beneath her feet. The star field visible through the vista-plates (pitted and scoured they may be) shifted, the gas giant began to grow. The ''Pax'' was a good, lithe ship, a Falchion pattern. She was able to take a turn and then accelerate into it without losing a beat. Vyn slid her hand along the railing of her position, smiling faintly.

It took six hours for the ship to traverse the gulf between their initial patrol route and the gas giant. In that time, several members of the bridge crew took cat naps, but most remained vigilant. Vyn herself kept focused by flipping through the daily reports that swarmed her position, delivered by Hue. She kept him busy, partially because she was concerned that if she kept him still for too long, he would drift off to sleep or contrive some way to get himself killed.

She glanced up from one report, catching Hue looking at her tattoos. That was not hard: They covered her from feet to forehead.

“Ensign, do you have a question?”

He shook his head.

“Then I would ask you to remain focused on your task at hand. You are twenty nine years old, Hue. The only reason you’re not still a midshipman is because there is a statute of limitation on that rank.” She glared at him.

“Ma’am!” Hue was saved, for the moment, by the voice of one of the other ensigns: Sub-Ensign First Class Kelvin McConnik. Vyn stood from her throne and looked down at the teenager. “Our auspex array is detecting a minute fluctuation ahead. Lt. Desna is looking into it right now.”

“Is it the ''End of Days''?” Vyn glanced at the lieutenant. Desna, as per her usual idiom, completely shut the rest of the world out of her mind, including – no, especially – other people. She looked as though nothing else existed save the auger terminal she was scrying with.

“No, ma’am, there are no heat signatures to speak of, beyond a few splotches that look like volcanic activity on one of the moons of OB-445. I theorize it might be a-asteroids.” His voice cracked at that last word and he blushed.

Vyn opened her mouth to commend him on his insight. She’d warn the macrocannon crews to be ready to fire on any asteroids that threatened the ship. Then her eyes widened, a realization striking her like a bucket of icy bilge water. The ''Pax'' was sailing into a gravity well…and asteroids could be easily mistaken for-

“They aren’t asteroids!” She shouted. “Helmsman-”

The first mine struck the ''Pax''.

The flash and the rumble rocked through the deck and alarms started to whistle – the light, not entirely frantic alarms that indicated the void shields were taking damage. Another flash, another rumble. This one was in the dorsal section of the ship, meaning that Vyn could see it herself: A groundcar sized hunk of explosives, guided by cold gas thrusters and a murderous machine spirit, hurtling straight at the ''Pax'', stopping short only due to the void shield. But then three mines struck at once and the void shield was down, popping like a soap bubble brushing a rusted nail.

This had all taken less than five seconds.

“ABOUT FULL!” 

“Yes ma’am, about -“

Before the helmsman even finished, Vyn whipped up her vox, shouting into it. “Enginseer Primus, get that void shield up now or-“

Two more mines struck, these further amidships. The deck rocked and alarms blared in Vyn’s ears. The gas giant – which had swollen to be the size of a proper planet and was still growing – started to shift to the side of the vista-plate. The gravity field also tilted sickeningly to the side. The bridge crew grabbed onto their lecturns to keep from sliding out of their chairs. Hue fell against Vyn’s command throne and she braced, as if she was on a boat in a storm.

“How long?” She shouted to the helmsman. He continued to work the complex controls that handled the ''Pax''’s thrusters and maneuvering jets. More mines burst against the vessel, farther back. A whining alarm whistled – the symphony of sirens, klaxons and bells told Vyn entirely too much about how badly her ship was being pummeled – and almost covered up the helmsman’s response.

“Five minutes!”

“You have one!”

“Enemy ship, fifteen hundred thousand kilometers starboard,” Alvin called out, coughing in the smoke that rose from the lower bridge cogitators.

“On screen,” Vyn frowned, gritting her teeth. The vista-plate crackled and hummed, a green tinted, blurry image appearing on the main window. The enemy ship, the ''End of Days'' painted proudly on her prow, was not what had been expected. Communiques from Admiralty had stated she was most likely a frigate or a raider. But Vyn, like the rest of the bridge crew, could immediately tell the make and class of a ship by the lines of the prow and shape of the keel, even if the rest of the hull could be altered by changing weapon loadouts. 

The ''End of Days'' was a Lunar class, a cruiser almost three kilometers longer than the ''Pax'' and sporting a vicious macrocannon broadside. A broadside that, even now, turned to face them as the ship emerged from behind one of the larger moons of the gas giant. Vyn’s thoughts jumbled and then settled out: She has the well advantage. Damn it. Because the Lunar orbited higher above the clutch of the gas giant, her ability to make changes in velocity was unimpeded.

Vyn nodded, to herself. She turned to the helmsman.

“Fire the zenith thrusters! NOW!”

The thrusters started to flare, visible through the bridge’s vista-plates: Tongues of re-routed plasma, rocketing up among row after row of forward facing dorsal mounted macrocannons that dotted the top of the ''Pax''. Slowly, the prow started to dip, and the gas giant swelled below them, starting to fill their vista-plates once more. Janus spoke, his voice pitched only for her to hear.

“Now we can’t fire our torpedoes at him…”

“I know.” Vyn frowned. “Helmsmen, all ahead full. Bounce us.”

The helmsman looked at her, but his hands did as they were ordered. The engine started to groan and the ship rattled as they rocketed forward, all chance of turning aside dashed as the ''Pax'' plunged towards the gas giant. But on the vista-plate, the ''End of Days'' turned, trying to keep track of the ''Pax''. The ''Pax''’s garboard thrusters fired, now, the helmsman trusting his guts rather than the auspex. The keel of the ''Pax'' struck the upper atmosphere of the gas giant. 

The ''End of Days''’s broadside fired; flashing and winking on the screen. The entire bridge crew tensed, but Vyn was grinning. A starship had a certain momentum too it, like one of the large predators of her home. Once it decided to do something, no matter how nimble witted its captain, there was always a delay between orders and consequences. Overhead, almost invisible in the night, the macrocannon shells sailed silently through space, to be lost to the void and time. Maybe, in a millennium, they would ruin an inhabited planet’s day.

But for now, they were not an issue.

“We’re heating!” Janus shouted.

“Put all power to the garboard thrusters!”

The garboard thrusters gained in intensity and fury, felt rather than seen, the acceleration pushing Vyn against the deck, as if the gravity field was increasing. The ''Pax'' started to rise, rocketing up and away from the gravity well at a narrow angle. Vyn closed her eyes, grinning for a moment.

And then the second wave of mines struck the ''Pax''. This barrage seemed endless, bursting against their restored void shields which, despite the efforts of the Enginseer Primus and his brave priests, folded after five impacts. Mines struck the dorsal ridges, crashing into macrocannon housings. Secondary explosions rocked the ship. Mines stuck the port and starboard armor. Mines struck the command spires, causing a power feedback loop through the bridge. Furious tech sprites exploded out of the forward lecturns. 

A mine clipped the prow, bounced without detonating, then slammed into the forward macrocannons.

Then, like the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor]] emerging from [[Horus]]’s [[battlebarge]], they came out of the mine field alive but wounded. The luminators were flickering, the air smelled smoky, two lecterns were on fire and being put out by ensigns with fire retardant foam. Vyn sat in her captain’s throne, listening to a wave of damage reports. She cut them off, picking up her vox.

“Enginseer Primus,” She frowned. “Vent some of our drive plasma.”

“What!?” His tinny voice grew positively garbled, a mechanical scream that made her jerk the vox away from her ear. “The machine spirits of this engine can barely sustain us, and you wish to furth-“

“I want them to think we’re bleeding to death, not just bloodied!” Vyn snapped. “And if you clockwork ninnies can’t do, I’ll load you into the fraking torpedo tubes!”

“…aye ma’am.”

The vox line clicked off.

Behind the ''Pax'', a streamer of boiling plasma spread through the void. The last few mines that they ran into were attracted to it, their flight visible by the plasma disturbed by their passage. Vyn leaned back in her chair, waiting to see just who the captain of this enemy ship was. Was he a mindless thug, who’d chase a dying prey in and get the kill? Or did he have an actual objective, a plan, a target to work towards? 

“The…the enemy ship is remaining in orbit around the gas giant.” Desna called out, sounding stunned. She looked like she had been standing quite near one of the tech-sprites, her face blackened with soot.

Vyn stood, to congratulate her crew…

Her voice died in her throat as she looked down and saw the charred body of Kelvin McConnik.