Bundeskanzleramt, Berlin Königstag 1. Ulrichszeit
There had been a debate about the forum for the next Science Briefing. Some wanted to restrict it to the Security Council as it was closely related to the Albion campaign that now drew to a close while saner heads argued that the results would be so far-reaching that anything less than the full cabinet was close to useless. The saner heads had prevailed and so the full government watched the cartoonish head of Nathan the AI.
"Yes Chancellor Thomas de Maiziere, I have made a full scan of the Citadel`s production facilities. While a lot has been damaged beyond repair two tanks full of nanites are still operational. The tanks need roughly 82 megawatt of power and a list of raw materials which can easily be obtained to produce the spare parts needed to stabilize the Portal. If the stream used for cooling is restored the Citadel is able to provide the power for several decades.
I have also found several replacement parts produced automatically by the Citadel when the requests were sent by the Portals VI. Their specifications were included in the Citadel`s database and if they check out can be mounted right away.
Depending on whether these parts are suitable the nanite tanks would be available to produce other items from five to twelve years from now."
"What can they produce?"
"Anything that is not dependent on manipulation on subatomic scales, these nanites are a bit basic I am afraid. But anything else that fits into the tanks they can make atom by atom and they can also recycle anything on that level. They can certainly produce items that are far beyond the technology level normally accessible to you presently."
"Nathan, some of my advisors warn me of runaway nanites, something they called "Grey Goo"
"Minister Johanna Wanka, the Old Ones have used nanites for more than 15000 years prior to building this facility. The risks of runaway nanites were well known to them and prevented by several different mechanisms. Firstly the nanites themselves perform checks on their functions. If they differ too much from the norm they deactivate themselves and are recycled by their peers. Also all nanites are pumped by a scanner regularly, if they fail they are destroyed. Lastly all nanites are made to work in a specialized environment-the ones in the Sage satellites only work in vacuum and low gravity, the ones in the Citadel only when in a special solution. We did not have a Grey Goo accident for 12000 years. Does this seem sufficient to you Minister Johanna Wanka?"
"Yes Nathan."
"There is also the question what the nanites should produce when they are done on the Portal business."
"Can they reproduce themselves and the Tanks to use them?"
"Yes, they can reproduce themselves Minister Johanna Wanka. Except for very few parts you could make the tanks without the help of the nanites."
"So if we would provide the necessary raw materials and energy-how quickly can we ramp up production?"
"Best estimate is that they can double their number every four months. If we keep them going for about 20 years they could bring Germany into a post-scarcity economy. Very likely you will need some important things before that, so 25 years are more likely."
The Portal, Albion Marttag, 6. Ulrichszeit
The Portal had been the site of excavation before Be`lakor`s servants had been killed or evicted. They had used countless slaves to gain access to the temple and remove what rubble had been left by the battle with Gotrek, Felix and Teclis so many years before. And while the slaves had labored till they died their efforts seemed like children`s efforts with a pail and a shovel in the sandbox compared to what the Germans and their allies had set up.
Heavy machinery had been flown in and moved earth in huge amounts. Jackhammers and tungsten-tipped motorized saws removed the parts of the temple that had no technical reason to exist and all-terrain trucks drove the rubble to points where it was used to reinforce barely usable tracks through the fens.
Whereas Gerard the Enchanted had to use a tunnel that would barely allow two people to pass now a fully cleared tunnel would allow a decent-sized forklift plus a sizable load. Torches and oil lamps were replaced by CFL`s and LED and many scaffolds stabilized what had been held up what had been held up by loam and rubble before.
Currently the cleared space before the Portal and the tunnels inside were filled with armed beings from several factions and a certain tension between these permeated the air. Germans were nearly everywhere, usually coordinating well with their Highlander allies. There were a few Clanspeople who tried their best not to get underfoot and some Asur who did their best to look unimpressed. Most impressive a great lot of Saurus and Skink Warriors who looked like they would tear apart anybody who so much as sneezed. They had already watched the huge airship descend and winch a palanquin to the ground which was borne by a double dozen Saurus Warriors. They carried something on their back which was best described as a statue of a Slann and gave it all reverence.
The tension had reached new heights when they learned that they could not carry the load all the way due to the limited space inside the Portal and the poor driver of the forklift was under a lot of pressure to do it right. He did the job well which was a very good thing and delivered the statue in the room that held both the portals and the pillars with the 19 Slann and the Truthsayer.
The beings that assembled around the last Pillar were as diverse as they were powerful-each in their own way. A misplaced looking scientist held Nathan, the AI. There was Teclis who had entombed the Truthsayer to the pillar before him, Tikato the Skin who lent his body to a far-off Lord Mazdamundi, Ten-Zlati who was here for the freight and Myrrdin. The looked, they prodded and checked before giving their approval to a couple of Bundeswehr engineers who removed the mummified body of the Truthsayer from the pillar. The next 12 hours saw words of power spoken, incantations chanted, holy substances burned, cables spliced and pipes connected.
And when all was done the assembled checked again and pronounced their works good, yet that was nearly superfluous as everybody present could feel the lessened vibrations, the even lights and the clean air that replaced an ozone stink. Lord Kroak was dead by nearly 7000 years, but something of the old Slann was undeniably still there. Whatever was there bonded well with the 19 others and together they managed to channel the energies of the Portal.
For all the magic ability expended, for all the wisdom applied this was just another stopgap, but this time the solution could wait for far longer.
Grunewald, Berlin
The room around the two lovers was formed by several trees who had grown branches just in the right shape. The inside was covered by smooth bark and even smoother moss, at least in the parts not taken by fur and silken covers. And while the inside was lit by a couple of candles the autumn cold was expelled by an electric stove. Given the combustible nature of the dwelling this was far safer and allowed the pair to stay in bed instead of tending to a fire.
Presently the covers were pushed aside, exposing pale skin free of any blemishes, slender limbs with well-defined muscles and a pair of small but rather enticing breasts. Both were in the grips of the mellow warmth that the end of a long romp will bring and Silva needed a bit of time before she could break the bad news to her lover.
"Sorry Aeolus, our date in Vorhexen is out, I need to get to Sylvania."
"That is rather unfortunate. What do you do in the realm of the Undead if I may ask."
"You may lial, nothing too secret about it as long as our nations are concerned, the Germans might see things different though. The Max Plank institute asked me a couple of months ago whether I might help them in a project of theirs, something they call a "Long shot" with a low probability to succeed. A very interesting idea and a worthy one if they can make it work somehow, so I helped a bit. Now they want me to show what they did with it."
"But why in Sylvania of all places?"
"Oh, I modified a batch of common heather to their wishes and Sylvania is the closest place they can control well and which has a surfeit of what is needed for the experiment."
"What could be there but for a lot of bones which move when they should not?"
"Warpstone."
Helmholz institute, Potsdam
Even when on this bright new world the mixture of beings in the conference room was eclectic. Several German scientists shared one side of the table, Tehentoto the Skink ambassador was on the other one followed by Aurelius and Aeolus representing the Asur. All looked at the projection on the wall that displayed a cut-open ball with a white-hot center, an orange mantle with several streams in it and a whisper-thin crust. In the lower right corner a small picture showing a caricature of an old man was inserted.
"This is the Warhammer World, or it least it was 22500 years ago. The ball in the middle is the core, white hot from pressure and fission processes. It is also lighter than it should be, something that vexed the Old One scientists that studied it to no end. Around that you have the mantle in various layers and finally the crust on which we all live.
The streams you see in the mantle are convection streams. Heated material rises from the area around the core, cools off below the crust and drops down to the core again. These movements power the movement of the tectonic plates, cause earthquakes and volcanos.
The Old Ones had mapped these streams and tried to predict their future movements. It seems that the old projections were off and I suspect the opening of the Chaos Gates is the cause of that."
"Thank you for this presentation Nathan, it was most enlightening. Yet I have seen similar pictures during my studies on Wikipedia."
"These pictures were of Earth, a very different planet Ambassador Aurelius of the House of Ethellorne."
"So?"
Such a comparatively small body should not speak in a voice that deep and be devoid of a timbre that was remarkably close to tectonic plates grinding against each other.
"Soo thiss iss the truth behind the veil. Thank you honored oracle."
"You are welcome Ambassador Tehentoto-I presume?"
"Mazzzdamundi am now. Ssoo this is what I feel when I move?"
"I suppose so Lord Mazdamundi."
"Need to learn more. Can do sso much more when I know."
"You assume you are right about that Lord Mazdamundi and that is why I called today`s meeting."
"What has this to do with us?"
"Ambassador Aurelius of the House of Ethelorne, when the Old Ones intended Ulthuan as the home of the Asur, they did not intend it to sink. This is the result of the deflected convection circuits. You have so far staved off that result by powerful magic, yet sooner or later that will fail. This is a suboptimal result."
"So?"
"So I propose that we form a joint undertaking-the Germans for the research with my help and the insights of Lord Mazdamundi, you with the help of the mages that keep Uklthuan where it is. We will determine the convection streams, where they arise and where they descend. We will build up a model of their movements and when we understand them Lord Mazdamundi will change them. Change them to the point where Ulthuan will no longer have to be kept up on the crutch of magic and threaten the world."
"You think we can do that?"
"We should find out, don`t you think Ambassador? There is a good chance of this to work, even if it will take a really long time, even by the measure of your kind. But it seems an eminently worthy goal with a reasonable chance of success."
"Sso this is Plan of the Old Ones."
"Oh yes, Lord Mazdamundi, this is part of it."
"Yessss."
Peenemünde Nord
The rocket was not on one of the pads surrounded by towers, instead it perched on a simple concrete pad covered with water. It did not look much like a rocket, it resembled an old TV-tube resting on four spindly legs.
Nathan Alpers watched it on a screen inside Peenemünde`s control center. The countdown had everybody on their collective toes, even when they had experienced it many times. A few seconds before the "0" was reached flames and smoke emitted from the back end and a deep rumble went through the ground even into the concrete center.
The flames build up to the point where they were nearly transparent and blue-tinged, showing the hydrogen-oxygen mix that burned with terrible heat and energy. And then the rocket rose off the ground without any drama. No support tower fell away bathed in flames and the rocket slowly accelerated upwards.
It accelerated to a barely mentionable 50 kilometers per hour before it slowed down its ascent at a mere 5000 meters. It hovered on its flames for nearly 30 seconds before descending slowy to the ground. This part of the flight was even slower than the first and by the end the rocket had decelerated to the point where it landed on the same legs that had propped it up before the flight.
This was the highest speed the prototype would ever reach and its flights would never exceed 7 kilometers of height. Still Nathan and the others slapped each other on the back in celebration of their success.
Frankfurt
In the twenty years I am reporter for Autobild, there has never been a greater cut of everything before than the Weltensprung. And the results of this event can be clearly seen at the IAA. Once, on another planet, the IAA was the most important car show on Earth. Dozens of brands sdisplayed their products, prototypes which would never see production, new car series and much more, condensed into a two week festival.
Today, the IAA is still the most important car show, but it´s size is a shadow of the former self. The remaining producers are counted fast. The native companies are well-known enough, Audi, BMW, Daimler, Opel, Porsche, VW and the handful of formerly foreign carmakers Ford, Peugeot and Subaru. A new or better revived, producer is Chevrolet, like Opel a GM daughter and producing a limited selection, Cruze and Camaro, at Opel manufactures for anti-trust reasons.
Last year BMW relaunched the Mini. On Earth the main production plant of the car had been at Cowley in England and the Munich-based premium manufacturer compensated for the loss by opening a new line at their Regensburg factory.
Ford makes the Fiesta, since only this car was made in the Germany-based plants. Peugeot expanded it´s existing sites and now produces the 106 and 206. Like Ford and Chevrolet, the continuing existance of Peugeot and Subaru as self-sustaining firms has anti-trust and competition reasons.
Subaru, producing off-roaders in a new Iserlohn-based factory, still exists curtesy off a Fuji Heavy Industries design team being in Germany at a conference during the Weltensprung and traveling with us to Warhammer and their business contacts with Porsche.
The "founding personal" of "Chevrolet Deutschland" was at the same conference as were the founders of newly returned Honda, whose plant has been erected at Burg Stagard.
With the exception of the well-sized Ford factories, the other foreign producers have small, limited capacities, which Subaru and Honda mitigate somewhat by only producing the off-road series and the latter building the main series in small numbers respectively.
At the moment there are 16 car producers in the Empire and it will be interesting which will make it and which will not in the future. Since the tech going into their cars has only interest for oldtimer fans, the stage of the Altdorf-based Reikland Motorenwerke, short RMW, is showing the Flag for the Empire. The cars there are magnets of the public, but logically only enthusiats buy some for their gatherings.
When it comes to native manufacturers back in business, I already mentioned the Mini, but the crown goes to Messerschmitt with it´s revamp of the Kabinenroller (Cabine Scooter). The brainchild of enthusiastic members from the Messerschmitt and Fend families would have been a beloved oddity on Earth, but with the situation Germany faces on Warhammer the modernised Kabinenroller with it´s rather affordable price is a hit.
While being stranded on Warhammer is not good for the variety of cars and producers, it is a fascinating time for innovation and evolution of automobiles.
When Germany arrived without tradelines, not only the existence of many car producers was put in jeopardy, the nation was starved for oil and gas, living on the dwindling national emergency reserve. The car manufacturers answered by throwing money at electro and hybrid drives, within 3 years surpassing the development of the decades before. The development of the supercap technology with the exponential raise of the everyday capabilities of electric drives through it, led to the breakthrough of electric and hybrid motors. With the supercaps faster reload cycles, longer range and more power on a level comparable to combustion engines became possible.
Today every manufacturer has several electric and hybrid versions of their models and the percentage of cars with these engines is steadily rising. "E-Tankstellen" (Electro "petrol" stations) are popping up even in the deepest hinterland today.
Still, this IAA evidenced a trend dawning on the horizon in the last months. In the first panic reaction after stranding here, a hectic search for oil and gas began. Since then, the very rich deposits in Sylvania, in Araby and the Sea of Claws have been found and tapped. These findings and the resulting securing of crucial energy reserves led to a fall of gas and oil prices. Today, heating oil and car petrol are cheaper than in the last 4 decades. The very low prices and good availability reinvigorated combustion engine development. In the last 2 years a new generation of Diesel and Otto engines came onto the market. Compact, efficient, well-powered for a multitude of car series and high-performance, very efficient, horsepower strong ones for utility vehicles and the premium segment.
And the innovations do not stop here. New, different raw materials enable new designs, refining technology and inventing new things was always a part of German design philosophy. Even here on Warhammer, German cars are absolute high-tech, one of the areas where we still lead compared to home, despite being cut off from Earth. If only this would be true for all spheres of life! While the data package we got from Earth confirmed that our cars are still the state of the art, other fields suffer from being away. Take cell phones. Our new designs are very rugged and durable, which is a plus here, but some internal stuff is lagging behind the Earth development, as is the number of apps. We simply lack enough researchers for this type of tech, them being working on more important things.
The datatransfer prooved that our technology begins to become hodgepodge. In some areas Germany is advancing ahead of Earth, in others we are falling back and it is already visible in just a few years after the Weltensprung!
Eagle`s Nest Barracks, Nuln
The "Pfennige" rolled from Heinrich Neidhard`s hand, skillfully removed from a roll by a dexterous thumb and were piled into a tower. He did not have to look and did not even consciously count them, he had done this since he had barely been able to walk.
"So now Eberhard, we have 21 pfennig and there are four friends of yours, how do you distribute them?"
Eberhard von Roon did his level best not to use his fingers to count them, just tried to move them in his head like that low-brow merchant tried to teach him for weeks now.
"That is fo..err five per man and one leftover?"
"Not bad." The hand moved fast again, taking a few coins back.
"And now we have 15 Pfennig and neither friends nor you are present."
"Uh, that does not make any sense. Is this where the bank comes in?"
"No this is the point where I explain to you that you must not divide by zero."
"Oh-oh now that makes sense you know."
"It is a bit easier when you have something to touch and move, isn`t it?"
"Yes it is, but it is also you and your kind."
"What do you mean, people who can calculate?"
"No, merchants. Do you always have to talk about money. This is disgusting."
"Money is important. No money means no planes, no airport, no trainers and no fuel and when where would we be?"
"Without planes, yes. But we are to be pilots, the knights of the sky and not some moneygrubbing quartermasters bickering about the price of substandard meat. Money should be there and not talked about so much."
"That would explain why half of the noble families are bankrupt or as close to it as makes no difference."
"You should be talking, you are the ones who made it so. Selling us wares you never made yourself and adding profit, lending money at usurious rates."
"Well, my family controls several factories now, so we make things too. But what good is something you want to have if it is made at the other end of the Empire or in Tilea? Who will gather it for you, store it, display it and finance it when you fancy it but us? And if you cannot afford to lend you simply should live within the means."
"Easy to say when you are not running a manor. One or two bad seasons and you are out of cash."
"Yes or one or two grand festivals given to impress the other manors. So?"
"You are not in a Kontor Heinrich, you are at an airbase and we all aspire to become warriors of the sky, fighting the enemies of the Empire, lead men into combat and defend the vulnerable. Without the flying part, this is what the nobles of the Empire do since Sigmar`s times. We have the courage, the leadership and the capabilities. We fight and we show others the way. This is what we were bred and trained to do and you talk about money and supplies. Have you ever heard Sigmar wonder about these? And that is why he favored our families for so long, we keep his dream alive.
"Sigmar did not need to worry about supplies as a sword needs no reloads, a horse can eat grass and the army could forage. We cannot pressure some farmer for oxygen and our planes will not consume the lawn on the runway. And Sigmar loves those who fight for those who cannot defend themselves, and you certainly have no monopoly on that. Yeomen have fought with the armies since Sigmar`s time and even before the Germans came we became more important every year. When the Dawi gave us the secrets of gunpowder and the pike regiments were foundered the days of the oh-so-noble knight was about to end and you certainly know that.
And these days the infantry had become many times as powerful, as has artillery. And when was the last time one of you nobles deigned one of the line regiments with his leadership or learned enough math that he could lay some real guns?"
"Even those need us to provide inspiration to encourage them."
"I smell bullshit. My family knows the Emsers. You might remember that name-Hans Emser was the lieutenant who defended the embassies in Altdorf and who died in downstairs Skavenblight so that others had the time to evacuate. You will have to look hard to find a more courageous soldier and he comes from a line of coal merchants. We can do it too.
Eberhard, really now-the old world of the noble families is dying. It was already dying before the Germans came when most of you could not find any other means of upkeep than their manors when manufactories and trade were growing every year. It was dying when musket and pike started to keep the noble armored rider from gloriously running the poor footsloggers down. A riflemen does not need to be trained since he can walk to be effective and you do not need a small village to keep him up. This was all in motion before, the Germans have just greased the wheels and gave that particular cart a shove."
"Oh the horse is done on the battlefield in a few years, I`ll grant you that and commoners make good riflemen. Some nobles have taken up others ways of making a living now, think of the Countess of Nuln or Friedrich of Altdorf. Yet there is one place where you are wrong. There is a place where a village or more has to provide for a single fighter, where individual ability is asked for, courage and leadership. Where the commoners all work for the warrior who is to fight for them all and this place is here Heinrich. I will be one of the new knights, the knights of the sky. Will you?"
"You bet your noble ass I will."
"Five marks that you flunk tomorrow`s solo."
"Here are my marks-put up yours."
Both did not sleep well that night, the thoughts of their first solo flight would do that to them. And yet when Heinrich Klement was about to falter on the way into cockpit he reminded himself that we would rather die before giving Eberhard von Roon this kind of satisfaction. Both candidates managed their respective flights well enough.
Eberhard smiled when he saw Heinrich`s plane claw for the sky. Heinrich might have learned to calculate when he was barely learning to walk, yet he had learned how to motivate men to do what might well kill them barely later in life.
Sylvania
The landscape before Silva ad`Garrolin was not a lifeless hell-indeed it was full of life. The gently rolling hills were dotted by very few gnarly trees and bushes while every other piece of terrain was covered by green shrubs that rose up to about knee height.
Green leaves were outshone by green crystal growths that had replaced the flowers that would normally crowned the heather. The green crystals were blinking, reflecting light and even glowing on their own.
The landscape in front of her was filled with life, but not normal, healthy life but an unnatural twisted very of it, full of a poison that threatened body and soul. And she had helped to bring it along.
It seemed a fitting penance to wear a stifling mask with goggles that always threatened to fog over, with a filter that made every breath a chore just to provide stale air that tasted of dead things and wearing a suit that made her sweat just by standing still.
Yet not all was life before her. There were two clumsy-looking vehicles that rolled over the field that somehow harvested the heather and dropped something black and powdery on the ground. The vehicles seemed to be driven by inept drivers as they often stopped in front of ponds instead of going around and often took what looked like long detours.
"The harvesters are unmanned and driven by computers Frau Garrolin, exposing any human to so much warpstone would be unwise. The algorithms for navigation are still being improved."
The German besides her was as featureless as she was under the protective garment, yet wireless set made his slightly sardonic voice easily understood.
"So what do they do?"
"I`ll explain, but would you mind that we go back to the shelter so we can get rid of these garments?"
"Not in the slightest."
15 minutes later both were at a series of containers with heavy-duty seals on all doors and Silva`s ears popped when she left the showers that cleansed her suit of contamination. She donned her travelling clothes before meeting again with the German. He was tall, well built and bald as an egg. Maybe to compensate he had a well-trimmed beard and mustache. He smiled when he saw her, yet not in the way that many men did when they saw her.
"So, you promised to explain what these harvesters do."
"Oh they harvest the heather with a modified reaper attachment. The biomass is then put inside a crusher. As the warpstone crystals are inflexible they are ground to dust and can be sifted off. We shred the biological remains and drop them behind. The warpstone dust is put into several storage tanks which are unloaded when all of them are full."
"And what do you do with it?"
"The Sisters of Sigmar put it back where it came from-into the warp. We have done this before several times with the warpstone we retrieved from Skavenblight, it is an established procedure. Here we clean up the pollution that was left by a meteor that raised the warpstone contamination to such levels that even von Carstein wants to get rid of it. If things work out we can apply it in Tilea so that we can clean up the mess left by blowing up the Horned Rat. But there is a much more ambitious goal."
"And what would that be."
"Wherever the Forces of Chaos hold sway for some time they infuse the environment with their magic. This goes double for the terrain around the Chaos Gates. This magic seems to condense into the warpstone that contaminated the ground, the water and everything that lives there. This is why the Chaos desert becomes bigger with each year. If we could remove that warpstone, if we could cleanse the soil we could push the desert back. That is what I would call an ambitious goal."
"And a worthy one, very much so. You will have my continued support Herr Abel."
"Thank you very much Frau Garrolin."
Peenemünde Nord, Bäckertag 6 Vorhexen
Olaf Merz was busy as a one-armed wall-paper hanger. He currently had several projects which very all pretty critical for the overarching goals of the German space program: Eliminate the Sage Satellites and shut down the Stargate for the time being. There was the reusable SSTO, there was the new space launch center, there was the rebuild of "Polarstern" in orbit that was so intense that the ship would be renamed "Nordstern" and more besides. Of course all to be done yesterday and on a shoestring budget.
Even with all that he found the time to read a paper by CjVR, Pullem and Pottinger. The three of them had been the driving force behind the Pottinger-Pullem drive which drove two probes already. The tungsten core without the H2O2 part would be the core of "Nordstern`s" new drive and its superior efficiency allowed missions unthinkable before. So when these three came with a new proposal it paid off to take the time and read it up.
Again the paper was about a new type of space drive and again it held great promise.
While the ISP of their first drive was revolutionary this one promised to be off the charts and would allow for spacecrafts weighting upwards of 100.000 tons to be launched directly into orbit. A trip to Verda would take roughly four weeks. All of that fine and dandy before one started to look a bit deeper.
MEEPP drive-Magically Enhanced External Plasma Pulse drive indeed. Which, in plain German meant that the three "gifted" engineers and scientists proposed to use warpstone bombs to power an Project Orion-derived spacecraft. They thought about detonating bombs with at least 2-3 kilotons of yield behind a huge late made of many meters of steel which would drive the spacecraft via a series of gigantic shock absorbers. How crazy was that?
They claimed it would be a good use of the warpstone accumulated in German storage from Skavenblight, that the huge pusher plate would absorb the radiation and that the computers that were potentially vulnerable to warpstone could be replaced by fluidic ones. They even indicated that the Skaven POW might still have a Clan Skryre engineer who might know how to build reliable bombs and shield the crew…
By this time Olf Merz`s head started to hurt for real.
