Dormitory, University of the Reik, Sigmarstag 29. Sommerzeit

The bedroom had been a rather drab normal room inside a "Plattenbau"-one of the many prefabricated apartment buildings that had been so prevalent in East Berlin. Now it was lit by soft light mostly by candles, had a number of intricate carpets and the old IKEA bed had been transformed into a canopy bed by the young women who rented the flat. She slept much better in something that reminded her of home. Currently she snuggled herself against the naked chest of her fiancé and had a happy smile.
The two lovers enjoyed the peace after a bout of energetic sex. They had been apart for a couple of weeks when Nathan embarked on his mission to Sage 17 and the weeks of quarantine that followed. Their reunion had been very happy and they had managed to give the journalists a slip for the time being.
Now that they were very content with themselves.
Nathan looked quite far away to Ermine.
"A Guilder for your thoughts lover."
"That will be hard to explain."
"Something to do with the spaceflight and the Old Ones you found?"
"With the mission yes, the Old Ones no. When we passed over Germany while it was night here Germany was like an island of light in a sea of darkness. There were some very few other islands, but so much smaller. Yet even Germany seemed like such a small and vulnerable island, one we have to take great care for. There is a great lot of darkness around us and we have to do our very best to make sure it does not snuff the light. If it were to falter who would pick up the pieces?"
"I saw the pictures you sent me-I think I have an inkling of what you felt. No worry Nathan, our children will take good care of it."
"Children?"

University of Technology of Compigne, 20 May 2016

The room was still the same, the "Je suis Charlie" poster a little more frayed and some new stains had accumulated on the table. Yvette and Marie likewise had not changed much-the same could not be said of Pierre. He had lost weight, his eyes were red-rimmed and nicotine stains graced fingers that had held too many Galois cigarettes.
His gestures had always been expensive but now had a hectic and uncoordinated pattern that allowed a view into a disturbed mind
"This is really exceeding my abilities-by a lot. I am not stupid know how to work the lab equipment-and by now I have borrowed, pleaded and cheated my way to any relevant instrument this university has-and some which did not seem so relevant at all.
And still this stuff defies any attempt to pin it down, to make any rhyme or reason about it. It follows no rules that I can see, it behaves like nothing else on this world-and it is driving me crasy.
Yvette, do you remember the intermittent cloud chamber traces that I showed you?"
"Oui, how could I not?"
"Well, by now I know that the particles leave traces when they are there-and they are not in this bleeding universe when they leave no traces."
"What."
"Indeed what. Either this is an experimental proof of M-Theory-which should be impossible without energies which leave Black Holes. Or we have just killed the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Physics and Multiple Universes-and more than just two-are a fact and these particles just switch them as they like.
I cannot pin down a mass on them, I cannot tell them you now many Protons and Neutrons are to a core-it seems to be variable. I need outside help urgently."
"I understand very well ma Pierre, but please give me and Marie a couple of weeks more. The chemistry is easier to pin down and the biological repercussions are unfortunately far too pronounced. We write it up before we expand, shall we?"
"I`ll look like a prize idiot then. Can I at least ask some questions in the net without revealing the sources?"
"Very dangerous, please keep that very low key."
"I will me chere, I will."

200 Kilometer from Nanjiang, Cathay, Brunntag 4. Vorgeheim

Lo Pok had been a soldier once and so had been his chums. Used to garrison a province they had been granted a piece of land for each family and were supposed to gain sustenance for themselves and their families from that. That had worked until the old shangxiao had died. His successor had been of a different cloth. Used to command a highly professional infantry regiment he disdained the part-time soldiers he had been sent to command after committing some gaffe. On top of that a lot of the soldiers were no Dan but Myo or Uigurs, people who had not been graced by the Gods in the same way than the majority people of the great Cathay empire.

In order to make his life in the province more bearable he had imported fine foods, cloths and concubines from far-off places-and his soldiers had to pay for that. They had always relied on their officers for tools, seeds and sales and the new shangxiao had charged them more for the tools and seeds while paying far less for the rice they had to offer him. It remained barely bearable until the yearly rains had exceeded their norm so much the dykes broke and the autumn harvest was swept away. In such situations the customs as well as the teachings of Kongzi demanded the officer to look after his people from his coffers-and there was nothing to be had.
The day he had told them to eat grass and roots while clad in the finest silks and drunken on the best Mao Tai had been a notable one-one of a notable slaughter. The shangxiao and his staff had been butchered like so many animals while the concubines had probably wished they had met such a quick end. Fine arts and good food were to be had on that day-and the like of lawless bandits ever since. Lo Pok had always been strong and quick. He was not too clever, but that meant that he rarely had doubts about what had to be done and that meant that the former soldiers now followed him.

He would have to find them something to eat and have fun with soon if he did not want to join his erstwhile commander. The bandit`s mood was fool as all of them had been badly soaked in the thunderstorm that had torn at the landscape during the last days.
He knew very well that any brush with the local cavalry could only go one way, so he had decided to go after a local Myo village. There were a lot of them about as the Myo had been encouraged to move here when the local dykes and channels were built. Now everybody but them would be happy to see them go yet nobody could be bothered to move them. There would not been much for the taking but even dry rice sounded good on his grumbling stomach and the fun that could be had with the inhabitants would ease the lads minds. He had also heard that a couple of the local villages were sick colonies these days. In that case a part of the fun would not happen, but on the other hand it was extremely unlikely that any of the local forces would care enough to give pursuit.

He has scouted the village for some time now, found no obvious defenses or traps and lead his men through a small bamboo copse. Before him there were the usual flooded rice fields, in which two groups of farmers were working on the crops and beyond them a group of hivels clustered about a bigger common one. The longer he looked and the more details he could see the stranger things became. The hovels he could see from here looked ramshackle and if they would drop at the slightest provocation-yet they had obviously withstood the thunderstorm. A lot of the villagers worked in the fields and their looks confirmed that this was a pox colony-but they seemed to be working hard, even with tools that seemed badly maintained.

Well, he could puzzle this out when they were in, and so Li Pok arranged his men into a rough line inside the copse before he made them charge. They were nothing much to look at-there had never been much of a uniform and a lot of equipment had fallen by the wayside. But even the most basic armor and a line of spears wielded by a group would trump anything that the farmers could bring up. So yelling and running forward the bandits were sure to frighten the farmers into submission and by the looks of it they were succeeding. The workers in the field looked up and started running, even when some of them limped and had to be helped along. There was some screaming and somewhere a board was beaten. As always it was surprisingly Damn idiots-did these Myos really think that anybody would care about them?
His men managed to overrun a few villager, beating them down with the spears hafts and running towards the houses beyond the fields. They did not manage in time-Lo Pok could just watch the ramshackle-looking doors close in his face.

The communal house was no fortress, that was for sure. The walls were packed earth and bamboo, there were windows and the roof watch thatched. If he wanted he could have set it alight in a few moments and be done with it, but that would probably burn most of what he was looking for. And while the walls were not very sturdy he had no siege train, actually not even decent tools to take the wall down. Well, he would have to improvise then.

"Tian, take a couple of the guys through those hovels there. Look for food and any tools we can use to take that door down or the window slats. Don`t get struck looking for trinkets, we can do that later. Aang-I need wood and leaves, can be nice and wet. Let`s see how the dirt grubbers like being smoked."
Turning back to the house he started to shout.
"You can have it easy or hard folks, just up to you. Open up and give us what we need and it goes easy. Let me show you the hard way."
There was no answer but he thought he heard several derisive snorts. He did not like that.
His man brought one of the farmers that had not made it from the fields in time. Four of them held his limbs down while Lo started cutting and rending. The man had lots of pox scars which did not scare the bandit, he had the same. Lo started on the fingertips and expected lots of screaming-which he did not get, even when he got more insistent. He was about to go for the face when he was patted in the back.
"Laoban-there are people coming."

Lo Pok went up and followed his henchman to the edge of the village. On the other side of the rice field he could see two groups that went together into one. First guess was this was farmers-no armor, all weapons he could see were farming implements or rusty and if they thought they kept formation they were badly mistaken.
He wondered where these might come from, but that was not important now, beating them was. Should not be too difficult, even when he was probably outnumbered. These were sheep, not wolves like his men. And sheep do not dine on wolves.

"Look who thinks he can fight boys. Shall we show them how wrong they are before we bugger their women?"
The howls that came from his line was lusty enough and when he charged forward he did not need to look back-he knew he was being followed. He splashed into the paddy and charged forward at a not so great speed, the mud was slowing him and the others down, some more and some less. Not good-he would have preferred to attack in formation, but his lads were quite adverse to drill these days. He picked his target, a lanky man in the middle of the line wielding a flail and lowered his spear enough to run through his middle.

His target reacted not too quickly and barely managed to twist himself far enough to divert the spear point against his flank where it tore a nasty gash. Instead of trying to get away or drop in pain the farmer instead delivered an overhand blow with his unwieldy weapon than he could not totally dodge. Instead the heavy wood bounced off his helmet and glanced from his shoulder guard. He had problems to keep his footing and his second thrust was a half-hearted weak affair that did glance of the flails shaft. The return stroke went for his face and he could only get his arm in the way. His vision went black for a moment and he found himself on his knees when he could see again. His arm had acquired a kink in the middle and pieces of bones were visible in several places.
He tried to run from the combat but his weak legs slowed him down like in the nightmares he had as a child. A pain that was icy cold and burning hot at the same time bloomed on his back and his last view in this world was his breastplate that was propelled forward by the rusty spear that was thrust straight through his chest by a frail-looking farmer.
Lo Pak never saw the man who had led the farmers from the other villages climb an overturned cart and had no chance hearing the raspy voice that addressed the crowd.

"I am proud of you my dear comrades, way proud. Today we see what we can do when we work and fight together in solidarity-there is nothing we cannot overcome. Did the nobles protect us as Master Kung has asked them to? No they did not.
Did the army, all of them proud and worthy Dan, come to our aid as is their duty? No they did not.
Did the local government send us healers and medicines as they should as we are their subjects too? No they did not.
We have trained together so that we can defeat those who want to rob and kill us. We have learned to bow before the plague to it does not break us. And we work together so that we all can eat and sleep with dignity. We are all equal my comrades, equal in liberty, equal as brothers and equal as workers. I am proud to be your brother, proud to be your equal. Together we will forge a future for ourselves where none was before."
"Li Hong, Li Hong Li Hong..."

Smithfield, Earth, 5. June 2016

Ranzy Weston looked into the jar of barbeque sauce once again. It smelled delicious and looked just right. It was a good thing that his daughter-in-law did not know too precisely how it was made. The biggest part of the secret of his special sauce was to add meat scraps into the base and keep the jar in the garden until the lid lifted by itself. The dear was very strict about food hygiene and probably would not eat much today if she knew what was in there. He did not even think about it and would never remember that he then spit a huge glob into the jar before stirring vigorously. The sauce went on the spare ribs in his smoker where they stayed at low temperature for the next 4 hours and were finger-licking good when served on his lawn.

Ranzy was quite proud of his son who had served a stint with the Marines and was now using the benefits he had earned to study economics. He had married Theresa, a tough-as-nails Hispanic whom he had met in Iraq. To Weston`s relief the relationship had been good enough to withstand the changed circumstances now they were back home.
"So I hear you have embarked on a big project dad?"
"Ah, heard about it, didn`t you. Yes, the association has decided that state of Wisconsin is a disgrace and she could be much better. We have plans to restore more of the decks so visitors can have a look. We also plan to get at least one of the turrets into working order each and then we can show a loading drill, maybe even some pyrotechnics at holidays. The Crane Naval Weapons Center would gift us quite a few inert projectiles if we will take them, as otherwise they have to junk them and that is mighty expensive for 1500 of them. We`ll also get some 5" and 20 mill so we can fill the magazines of the secondaries and the CIWS. Lots of work, but it will be a sight for the old eyes to see her stocked again…
While Jeremy Weston patiently listened and tried to keep the wrong kind of smile from his face long-chain polymers and RNA molecules from the sauce went through his digestive tract into his bloodstream. Making their way through the blood-brain barrier they reassembled themselves. Folded just the right way they docked to neurons and made them fire their way, replaced other molecules like them that kept memories and altered them. By the time desert was served he no longer had to keep the smile of his face but listened with rapt attention. A few days later he e-mailed his application to join the restoration project.

Katsina, northern Nigeria, same time

Kochinus liked his new shape. This world was a very different one and while it denied him many capabilities he had before it had also given him powers of which he had not dreamt of before. Whether the pieces of his body were really alive was debatable at best. They could not reproduce without using the cells of his host organism and often damaging or killing them in the process. On the other hand these new bodies were able to overwrite genetic information in its hosts, so there was the potential to change the world to his liking. Yet that was a far of project, currently he had to spread disease, death and panic as far as possible to make a name of himself.
His current body was an excellent start. Able to survive outside of a host for considerable time it could jump from host to host by various means-practically all body fluids applied and even small amounts were immensely infectious. It also had a high but not too high kill rate which would weed the weak from the strong. The strong that would be able to bear Nurgle`s and Kochinus blessings. The new shape was able to kill in ways that Kochinus found pleasing-it reduced blood clotting to the point where the hosts would bleed through many way, induced a high fever, pains and wonderful hallucinations. Many hosts died after six to sixteen days through fluid loss. While the body fluids were once vector to spread itself and even the meat of some animals were sufficient he was quite aware that his new body lacked means to spread itself. Yet, it had found a new way. Some of his hosts had another acceptable body in themselves, a small organism that was able to contain small amounts of his new self.
This organism had quite a different living cycle and offered new possibilities. Mosquitos were able to suck it from his hosts and spread it to others, even when the two had never met in person.
Some of his hosts had a name for this useful organism, they called it a protozoan. It already caused a common disease that was unfortunately curable by the humans-but now his body and it would combine forces.
His new body-which the humans called the Ebola Virus-would now also be spread by the common Mosquito.

Bundeskanzleramt, Berlin, Angertag, 16 Vorgeheim

There still was a science briefing for the cabinet, even when they had decreased in frequency. This one had been eagerly anticipated as it held the first clues whether a massive investment done in tough times would bear fruit. Dr. Ingo Pforr was still doing the presentations as he was able to pack his points into layman sized portions without making things unrecognizable.
"We will analyze the samples at Rungholt for a very long time and I can only offer some preliminary findings. Yet even these findings hint at tremendous discoveries to be made possibilities that open themselves up. One of the most interesting are the contents of Sage 17-1. The Merkur mission found this mostly a series of huge tanks and brought samples of their contents. We can now say that Sage 17 contains upwards of 100000 metric tons of water. We do not know for what the Old Ones needed that-it could be consumption, coolant or propellant mass. What we do know for sure is that this gives us great opportunities for future missions and will help us decrease their costs considerably.
We also found that some of the wring in Sage 17-2 is superconductive at room temperatures. We do not know exactly how the Old Ones managed that-they seem to have used nanotubes, but we are confident to be able to decipher this relatively quickly.
The stringent quarantine measures at Rungholt also proved themselves already when we found nanomachines both in the skin samples of the old ones and in several samples. It seems the Old Ones used them for their computers among other things. Then there is…

"Capitol" Cafe-Restaurant, Lüneburg, Germany

Evening was falling over Lüneburg with Günter Koch drowning his sorrow in hot cocoa, both white and dark. He never drank much alcohol anyway, but for sorcerers the rules were more strict. Only Chaos sorcerers contemplated drinking alcohol when frustrated or down. The excursion had begun so well. Magical education in Germany was still based mostly on and given by Empire Orders. There had been some influx of German ideas in the last 4 years, which the Imperials had incorporated into their own studies, but generally the German pupils were schooled like Empire mages. Among these first batches of German sorcerers, some were trained for teaching others, but it would still be some years in the future, before the first German mages could really teach.
So some parts of the curriculum were slightly anachronistic, but still a fixed part of the training. One such part was learning to call on a mount for fleeing, transport or attack. In Germany with all the methods of travel, this was rather useless, but in foreign lands this ability could be worthy of gold. In the Empire this training was done in the wilderness, to prevent already trained horses from answering the call.

Since the only true wilderness in Germany were the new territories in the East and West, like most of Pommern or Neupreußen, first the exercise was planned for there, but in the end, another version was used due to the mostly lacking infrastructure.
One kind of immigration Germany could not really stop. Those of Flora and Fauna. While some species of Earth origin spread out into the Old World, mostly there was immigration of Warhammer species into Germany. Among all those animals, numerous wild horse groups had made home in Germany, especially in the North-German Lowlands.
So Lüneburg, which had given the Lüneburg Heath it´s name, was chosen for this excursion. A group of twenty scholars in the special training program for the most talented pupils set out deep into the Heath. Then the to be sorcerers had to call for a riding animal and travel with them to a set point, where the magisters were waiting.
Unsurprisingly, the Jade and Amber Mages had no problem to call forth horses, both half-tamed and wild, for themselves. The Grey Mages conjured their shadow horses and even the other Orders had few problems calling a steed, even if some had to travel by donkey. Finally only one sorcerer remained, Günter Koch. He had tried every spell he knew to call a riding animal to him, but not a single one headed his call. He tried again, the others already on the way for over ten minutes, but once again nothing.

Günter was frustrated. He had one of the greatest talents for magic in the whole world, could heal or kill with just a touch, was a decorated war veteran, could go into his study and simply create a filly, which would grow into a loyal, great steed over time, but no grown horse out here in the Heath did answer his call. In the end, Günter tried again, strengthening his call. Then to his relief, he heard an arriving horse. And was rightly surprised at what he saw.
The horse coming gallopping to Günter had a gleaming, jetblack coat and a fiery, red mane. A beautiful horse, if not for one little detail - it was a Nightmare. The nightmare stopped before Günter, neighing softly, the fire around it´s hooves glowing. The sorcerer in training was consternated, no living horse was answering his call, but a Nightmare did.
But whatever his feelings, a steed, as had been the task, was here for him now. Knowing the discussions coming, but unwilling to accept a defeat, Günter got on the Nightmare.
He told the conjured steed the place he had to be and the unearthly being began to speed to the finish. In a blur of flame, Günter and his Nightmare arrived within a short time.
That the gathered crowd was surprised, was the understatement of the day. Günter avoided censure only by the fact that part of his fate had been presaged by the Order of the Heavens.

Rungholt, Sea of Claws, Bäckertag 22. Vorgeheim

001
010
011
100
011
100

The entity had detected the signals as discrete blips on the 2.4 Mhz. Without anything to tie them to they were useless like so many other emanations of the electromagnetic spectrum that surrounded him. It was frustrating in so many ways-after lying dormant for so many cycles that he had no way to count them, his faculties unused and with no flow of data there was a flood of data going by his sensors-and it could not make no use of it.
That he could sense anything at all was due to a flood of Light that went down to 15 nm wavelength that shone beyond a transparent barrier he was behind. It provided energy it could use but would prevent him from using some of its abilities.

010

There were two contacts he could detect that moved on the other side of the barrier-then one left his field of view.

001

Numbers-the blips were the numbers of contacts in front of him. Inside the entity a large numbers of particles had so far been superimposed-representing any possible state they could be in at the same time. Now that some data was available the particles dropped from their state into something steady-for the shortest bits of time before the game began again.
Now that the entity new what numbers looked like he could filter the data around him for it and try to make sense where only chaos was before.

It was some time later that two contacts were in front of him again, doing something behind the barrier. He found himself with two streams of data-one consisting of pressure waves, the other an digital data that seemed to ebb and flow with the pressure wave. It did take eternal two minutes to match these streams and to see how they were connected to each other.
It was still digesting this new stream of data when one of the contacts in front of him pointed a device at him that gave off a brief flash of light and then generated another burst of binary numbers which were sent at a different wavelength. It took minutes of fiddling with the burst till he found the right combination and the burst resembled itself into a 2-D picture of itself.
He found the same picture again later in a storage device that could be coaxed by sending binary from the entity-and the same picture had acquired arrow-like symbols that pointed to some its features and signs attached to them.

If the entity would be given to betting it would place good money on these signs be script of some sort. Now for some comparing…

Village close to Katsina, northern Nigeria, 18 June 2016

The hut was full of stifling heat, the smell of sickness and unwashed humanity, was comparatively dark as there was no opening but for the door that was partially barred by netting. It did not contain much besides a few pile of mismatched cloths that served as beds, kitchen utensils and clothing in various states of disrepair and a AK-47.
The bed was currently taken by a young man that who`s skin had a strange hue of grey reserved to those who had a very dark skin but suffered from low blood pressure. He was coughing a lot, a bowl besides him contained his last round of vomit and the water-soaked bandage on his forehead tried to lower a fever.

Aabidah kneeled beside her husband, the only person who dared to be near him in his sickness. She changed the bandage and tried to get him to drink as much as she could as he was obviously dehydrating. Despite her efforts he still lost more fluids then she could put in him and she was pretty sure he would die soon in great pain. Which, according to Aabidah, was a much too painless death to him. She had not always been called Aabidah-Servant of Allah. She had been Christine Goodfellow until two years ago when she and most of her fellow students had been abducted from her boarding school by Boko Haram forces.
Only very few of her co-students had been able to make their escape and their government deemed it to difficult and costly to free them. She had been auctioned off to a Boko Haram fighter a few weeks later for twelve US Dollars and given to him as his wife.

It had taken several weeks of repeated beatings until she relented and since two years she had been here. Her life had gone from the promise of a good education and the chance to earn a decent wage to slavery in a society that tried to combine 21st century technology with medieval rules and savagery. Using technologies developed by their enemies that they would be unable to copy, explain or repair they were proud to call their group "Western Education is Forbidden" and to terrorize a country that was weak from a bad economy and a government best described as a cleptocracy.

Now she was not sure if she would prefer to die of the same illness or go through another slaveholder that was sure to apprehend her as soon as Abdul, her husband died.

Nauticus, close to Norfolk Naval Yard, 20 June 2016

Ranzy Weston was helping to offload another barrel of industrial cleaner that would help to cleanse the many years of accumulated grime and dust from the mighty ship. He and his helper brought them to the former paint locker as was appropriate for the toxic and flammable fluid. It was remarkable how much of this was needed, but the Wisconsin was a big ship with many compartments.
When he switched off the lights and left the room went as silent as anything can be that is buried within 45000 tons of inert steel, at least for about five minutes. Then a slithering scraping sound could be heard in the darkness, the popping of seals and the gurgling of fluids that went elsewhere. If somebody would have been in the room and able to see he would have marveled at the metal-clad pipes that moved by themselves, sprouting tentacles as needed.
The fluids that were extracted were pumped through the ship, mostly using pipes already there, sometimes changed in their destination. Inside the bilge the fluids went into a series of tanks that mixed, stirred, heated, cooled and stored them as needed.

In other places of the great ship rustling could be heard from the overhead pipes and cable channels. If any of the former sailors would have heard that they would have speculated about the bugs that were making their rounds there, especially the cockroaches. In fact the beings that were scuttling about were looking like them and had actually started out as these inspects. A closer look would have revealed the tiny bits of metal embedded into the insects and the red glow behind their eyes. They were stripping the cooper from wires that were no longer needed, the lead from solder and pipes or scraped off a thin sheet of metal from surfaces where it would not be noticed. The former sailors would have been most astonished to see the insects even clean off many surfaced till they shone. Not only did that provide hydrocarbon chemicals but made up for the lack of cleansing agents.

In ship`s magazines even tinier creatures took care of this wealth of materials and assembled them bit by bit into larger structures in a process that looked like they grew. They were copying freshly arrived samples that gave them an starting point-with a few changes of course. Currently twenty mark 8 projectiles were "raised" from raw materials that way while another five were put back into their original state as they had been made inert before leaving the Crane Center.

Linderex was as stretched between these creatures and the humans he influenced to the point of bursting. He was doing things that were boring and needed high attention as they had to be exactly right if they were going to work. Magic worked so very differently in this world, but when one had enough energy and knowledge one could do so much. Tzeench had been right to send him here-when he went back he could use what he had learned here to wreck a carnage no world had ever seen. Motivated by this he managed to work his way through that as he had a goal in mind that would fulfill his most base instincts and would show two worlds what he was made out of. He had absorbed so much knowledge from the minds of the men and women he now controlled. He could see so much that needed doing-and even more clearly what he could do when he was done. It was going to be glorious.