Feron Station

Antares was still in conversation with the younger assassin when the captain of the Ragarnok entered to inform him of an interesting discovery; a small corvette class pirate ship - that had been expected to hit their blockade – had just zoomed past the gravity well still in phase space.

The presence of a female human – clearly identifiable as an Advent assassin but clearly engaged in friendly conversation with the Emperor – did little to perturb him. The captain had seen some weird things while serving under Antares, and a pacified assassin was actually not that weird considering he bore daily witness to a single man controlling an entire titan.

Antares merely brought up a holographic map and calculated the nearby planets the ship could conceivably reach based on its new trajectory and then redirected forces accordingly. He owned every single planet they could possibly get to and his forces would be there well before the irritating little corvette, so he dismissed the captain and returned to the conversation at hand.


When the Governor awoke the Captain was still on the bridge. The Governor was about to ask how much trouble he was in when Aaron noticed he was awake and deftly snatched the bottle he had placed near the chair before coming over to share a celebratory thanks-for-saving-our-lives drink. As the Captain praised his open mindedness and creativity, and then poured the whole crew cups of that particular variety of rum he always carried, the Governor traced back over the events that had just transpired in his mind. He had successfully redirected the corvette class ship in phase space to a new location based on a set of coordinates and times that had been given to him a long time ago by a survivor he had once had to interrogate. The poor man had been half dead already due to a long list of things like dehydration, exposure, starvation and exhaustion but he would have been savable were it not for the humongous radiation counts coming from his body. He had received several times the lethal dosage of radiation, as had the entire place he had come from. From what the Governor had deduced the location had been moving and had – in the course of its normal orbit – somehow taken multiple accidental direct hits from a series of Novalith warheads.

Coming out of phase space at Feron Station was obviously risky. He knew for a fact that the station was still out there, and he knew for a fact that it was still holding roughly to the course he had once helped program into it. He also knew that it had been renovated and had received a completely new defence network some time after he had left – but only as he had been invited to come and enter his details and scans of his eyes and fingerprints. Alas he had never done so; which meant that there was a fair chance they were going to die anyway.

The problem was that they could not just make port at any normal planet; Antares controlled them all and he could get ships there through phase stabilisers well in advance of their arrival – in fact he probably already had. There was one pirate base that they could, possibly, just have steered themselves to... but based on the fact that it had gone dark the Governor had the good sense to assume Antares had levelled the place. So the Governor was using a little trick; they were not headed for a normal planet. Technically they weren't headed for a planet at all, but rather a colossal Space station in orbit around the star. A derelict space station the size of a small planetoid; Feron Station.

Feron station had, in its glory days, served as a hub for almost every pirate in the solar system in one way or another. It had also technically aided many local planetary militia who had agreed to pay a handsome fee for the opportunity to deliver a raid to some newly conquered planet in order to harass some empire or other for decimating their homeworld. Fortunately, all such journeys had been conducted by using a satellite of the station. A satellite which consisted mostly of computers for calculating potential phase lanes and adjusting the data in the ship's nav computers on a nanosecond by nanosecond basis. This satellite had unfortunately been held in orbit through its own complicated system of engines and computers managing manoeuvring thrusters, it did not have any direct human control - which meant that when it received a mysteriously direct hit from a Novalith warhead it had perished almost completely and swerved out of orbit before colliding with the star in the center of the system.

Allegedly it had in fact swiped a sizeable chunk out of another empire's capital planet along the way, effectively rendering it uninhabitable. Or at least, that was the explanation for how the entirety of the local TEC Loyalist's fleet had been recalled only to re-emerge into a war zone as Antares' forces had slaughtered their way through the other TEC owned planets in the system... ...leaving them without even a single planet and facing a much larger and better prepared fleet that had already taken up defensive positions and constructed an Orkulus Starbase.

What that meant was; the main Station was still in orbit around the star, being held there by the systems he had helped design. But nobody else could get to it because only a handful of people in the system knew how to access the actual station without the help of the satellite, and almost all of those people were dead – and the ones who were alive weren't mad enough to attempt a blind jump into Feron Station.

Essentially they finally had a safe landing zone. There were only a few problems: the Station was moving incredibly fast, there was a chance it may have deviated from its course and bearing in mind the speed and comparatively small size of the station the odds of successfully entering its miniscule gravity well were slim at best. If they succeeded then they would arrive at the deserted station, scavenge for supplies and hopefully get a transmitter working and everything would be okay. If they did not succeed they would miss it and either plough into one of the few planets further out – which were undoubtedly occupied by Antares forces – or miss everything and shoot off into open space... meaning they would run out of power long before they even came close to another star... ...and die.

The Governor glanced at his holographic stopwatch and swore profusely; they had only two minutes left till they either lived or died. He would have liked more time to prepare...


The young woman, Iridana of the Shadow's Hand, sat talking to Antares about the styles of brainwashing the Advent used on those members who were not being directly controlled when she saw a flash of realisation on the Emperor's face.

"Excuse me for a moment; we may have a problem..." was all he said as he turned to his consoles and brought up the holographic star map again. She moved her hover chair closer so that she could see better and he gave her a warm smile as she appeared next to him. He seemed genuinely friendly and in the course of their conversation she had found him to be both polite and pleasant as well as quite well spoken. He spoke the common tongue used by all factions – the crude amalgamation of several languages that formed a graceless cacophony that was roughly understood by all but he also spoke fluent Vasari and he was fluent in both the main languages of the Advent and spoke several of the human dialects used by the assorted TEC groups.

The problem, as it appeared on the map, was the same apparently troublesome Pirate corvette. The holomap was projecting Antares' calculations of its course between planets. What puzzled Iridana was the symbol on the map denoting something large, spherical and very fast moving. That something looked to be on a precise collision course with the Pirate corvette.

"Perhaps whatever that is will hit the pirate ship?" She queried. After all, she was an assassin who had just tried to kill an emperor – whether she left this room alive or not did not hinge on her knowing one more military secret.

"Unfortunately I rather suspect they actually intend to land on it..." Antares concluded.

"Land on it? What is it?"

"That, my dear, is one of this systems best and worst kept secrets; that is Feron Station."


30...

28...

26...

24...

22...

"If we survive this Gov we're all buying you drinks for as long as you want." vouched one guard.

18...

"Sure. Whatever, lets deal with that if we survive." Was the Governor's only response. Other than that and the hum of the phase space engines the bridge was silent. Silent with anticipation.

14...

12...

10...

"What are the odds of this Gov?"

"Not good to near impossible. Take your pick."

6...

5...

4... The Governor closed his eyes, in his mind the likely scenario of sudden death played out in a million and one different ways...

3... the entire crew was on the bridge, all of them crammed into the tiny space. Several of them were holding their breath or praying to an interesting range of deities...

2...

1...

The computerised countdown went silent for an agonising amount of time... then, with a sound like shearing steel combined with a crash so loud no-one heard it; the corvette crashed.


"Feron Station?" She queried "I thought Feron Station was a myth?"

"You were meant to."

"But if its real why has no-one made contact with it in so long? None of the stories I have heard had anything to say about it prior to about two years ago..."

"That's because I got fed up of it two years ago. That and I had need of it."

"You had need of... wait, so its true? All of the stories are true?"

"Well, I doubt any of the stories are exactly true... but some of them are more accurate than others." Antares said. "You see, it is true that I was involved in the... ah... misdirection of several Novalith Warheads that were supposed to hit my Capital planet... and it is true that the Satellite did move of its own accord to get onto the course that led it to hit that rather inconvenient planet... It is not however true that I; single-handedly killed every man on Feron station with a blunt spoon before the first impact, nor did I use dark magic, nor did I sacrifice it to appease whatever Dark God the TEC think I worship – although I really do want to learn more about the origins of that strange rumour..."

"So you did actually redirect multiple Novalith warheads using only your psionic capabilities?!" she interrupted.

"No no no, my psionic capabilities – while significant – are not that impressive. I could perhaps defeat your Reverend Mother in one on one combat, but no more than that. I was obliged to use a much more ancient art; misleading information."

"You lied to the TEC?"

"No. I mislead their computers. It is fascinating how a group so technologically illiterate seems content to rely so heavily on computers..."

"You hacked multiple Novalith Cannons?" She asked incredulously.

"No, while I do have the capabilities that would have taken far too long. I merely had my spies input the data I needed into the computers. Its not like the TEC ever check their databases. That way the Cannons fired on schedule and in such a way that they believed they were in fact targeting my planets. Except for one where there was a bit of an incident and I was forced to take control of the command crew myself."

"What happened?"

"That's a story for another day. Lets see how those pirates are doing; it is rather difficult to actually get to Feron Station after all."


The Corvette crashed into the gravity well with such velocity that it had already succeeded in travelling some 300 kilometers by the time the pilot had gotten his hands back onto the controls.

It had made its way almost 500km into the gravity well by the time the reverse thrusters hit full power and it had made its way almost 600km in by the time the little corvette finally stopped moving forwards...

The crew all breathed out... which sent a collective exhalation of bad breath ricocheting around the deck and forced the Governor to scrunch his nose up to avoid losing his nose hair to the caustic odour. Then, with a collective happiness of a group of men who have just dodged death by the skin of their teeth, the crew began to cheer. At first it was just generic hoorahs, but pretty soon it became specific cheers relating to the Governor. In the small space the loud voices of the entire crew were deafening, and it didn't help that even the normally reserved Aaron joined in with the cheering with his exceptionally loud voice.

With that amount of excitement and stress, the Governor was on the verge of unconsciousness... the bad breath inevitably contributed to his dazedness and within seconds he had managed to render himself unconscious a second time in fewer than 4 hours. As before he was forgiven and the crew drank to their hearts content before ambling off merrily to sleep off the awful hangover that 'that rum stuff' always gave them. Having all been treated to several more rounds while the governor was unconscious they would likely sleep the next day or perhaps even two to avoid the hangover.

Perhaps due to the fact that clean air was now circulating within confines of the bridge the Governor awakened. He looked up, and was promptly offered a drink by Aaron – a drink he knew better than to accept – but which he accepted anyway. After swigging it down he turned to Aaron, but before he could say anything the Captain interrupted;

"I knew we could rely on you my friend. I never doubted you!" Then he remembered something and glanced at his chair. The governor followed his gaze and saw that the captain's mechanical hand had crushed the armrest into a very thin mess of steel. "Well... I might'a been a little nervous..." finished Aaron with a chuckle.