Part 14
Home sweet home
Chapter 93(orphan)
Franklin and his nuns stood on the Nightmare Asylum bridge alongside the entire onboard Sevenson extended family, grim fear engraved into almost every face, as the ship exited from a hidden naval web way gate.
The huge dark ship was quiet and grim but for the sounds of the engines and other systems, you could almost taste the fear in the air, the uneasy terror gripping at hearts.
The bridge was now currently illuminated through the viewing window, stained with a dull magenta light from the roiling warp turbulence of the dreaded chaos hells of the Maelstrom.
The Maelstrom was relatively small, not even half the size of the Eye of Terror, but was still thousands of light years across, encompassing many many millions of stars with planets. This was the dreaded Maelstrom, the second largest chaos hell region in the entire galaxy, home to the Sevensons and countless other murderous horrors of blackest evil.
Somewhere within this broiling hell lurked the terrible Sevenson Matriarch, a fell daemon princess at the height of her power, the monster that even other monsters had nightmares about.
The nuns whimpered at the mere sight of the Maelstrom, and huddled tightly around Franklin, fearing the horrors they would meet. Even Franklin himself was slightly blanched with adrenaline, feeling a huge weight of dread on his heart.
"Would that we could admire the view, but we cannot tarry here. We must reach Dark Tropic without delay if we are to hold our footing in Low Commorragh," Wendy said fearfully, sounding stressed.
The congregation of family members all nodded nervously. Franklin drew on the power of the Emperor as TigerLily drew on her own fell power, the Living Saint and Daemon glowing gold and blue respectively.
A warp rift opened up in front of the ship, and Franklin and TigerLily wrestled against terrible powers in the warp, for one final warp jump before finally docking the ship in its home port.
The journey was surprisingly short, barely two hours into the outermost edge of the Maelstrom, surprisingly close to real space and the Imperium of Man. A few daemonettes spontaneously summoned themselves into existence on the bridge, a sure sign the ship was now truly in the chaos hells, but it was otherwise fairly uneventful, (not counting TigerLily's songs).
The Nightmare Asylum dropped out of the "true warp" into the "half warp" of the warp energy saturated Maelstrom "normal" space, admittedly a confusing distinction, showing only a nebula of very faintly glowing magenta light in every direction, the light somehow swallowed up by some vast molecular cloud that absorbed most of the light.
Franklin saw surprisingly little in this vast molecular cloud of, (presumably), floating microscopic particles and molecules, there was a faint magenta glow in all directions, but VERY dim.
Franklin gazed around disappointedly at the seemingly empty near darkness, he saw nothing at all in any direction he looked.
Franklin looked to the Sevensons to explain what was going on. His father Luke pointed an armoured hand at an area of space in front of them, completely similar to all other areas.
Franklin squinted forward, but couldn't really see anything.
TigerLily snapped a finger, and a glowing ball of supernatural blue energy shot out from the head of her staff, flying harmlessly through the glass and off into space ahead, illuminating the exact direction Franklin needed to look.
The energy ball changed as it flew, becoming brighter and brighter with distance, before suddenly going completely black. Something small and round briefly illuminated ahead, visible for a few seconds before fading again.
"What is that tiny thing?, An asteroid?," Franklin asked confused.
"THAT, my dear stepson, is a star," TigerLily tittered.
"But why isn't it glowing?," Franklin asked confused.
"Ah, but it IS glowing, glowing only in invisible infrared wavelengths. Almost every last photon of visible light is collected to generate power by a vast swarm of solar power satellites. The radiated heat is mostly all that remains." TigerLily corrected him.
"The ENTIRE star is hidden from view by satellites, I find that hard to believe daemon," Franklin countered.
"Believe whatever you wish," TigerLily replied.
Franklin said nothing and just kept looking ahead as the Nightmare Asylum flew.
For a time he saw nothing at all, just the same empty space. Then he began to notice a very very faint reddish white light, rippling and changing strangely, as though shining through a dark surface studded with moving holes to let light through.
The Nightmare Asylum was apparently moving at great speed, and the light got closer and closer at a growing exponential rate.
The strange sphere came into better view as it got closer. It was obviously glowing a dull faint reddish white, but some strange cloud of objects was blocking the vast majority of the light, leaving only a little to reach his eyes.
The objects in the cloud were moving with extreme speed relative to the Nightmare Asylum, or perhaps extreme slowness, it was hard to tell with relative velocities. Whatever way they were moving, they were clearly huge, vast silvery bowls pointed inwards, studded on their rear with extremely thin and long meshes of silvery metal, like long metal fur or something.
The Nightmare Asylum flew past billions of these floating giant objects, and it was obvious that each one was far bigger than the Nightmare Asylum, easily hundreds of kilometres across.
"What are those things?," Franklin asked curiously.
"Concentrated solar power satellites. Those huge dishes are just extremely thin aluminium foil with heat radiator mesh at the back to dissipate the heat. Each dish concentrates the light onto a tiny area of solar panels on the end of a long pole at the front of the dish. Has very few moving parts, just the simplest possible way to gather power from a star." TigerLily explained.
"But that is too small to be a star, it is surely just a planet," Franklin protested.
"Never heard of a red dwarf star you genius?, The smallest red dwarfs, like this one, have a similar diameter to the planet Jupiter. Has about 100 times the mass of Jupiter, but that mass is compressed by gravity into a dense object of similar size," TigerLily mocked him.
"So it's not a REAL star at all, just a worthless little thing that can't give out enough light to support life on a planet." Franklin retorted disappointedly.
"This orbiting swarm of satellites generate 7.6 sextillion watts of electricity..." Wendy replied ironically.
"Sextillion?, how much is that in numbers?," Franklin asked.
"10 to the power of 21 or to put it another way, a 1 followed by 21 zeros. A LOT of power," Wendy spelled it out.
"Is that enough power for the wars in Low Commorragh?," Franklin asked curiously.
"When combined with all the existing power we have created in Low Commorragh?, Oh my fucking Slaanesh YES!" Wendy exclaimed.
"7.6 BILLION terawatts of power," TigerLily added.
(Author's maths notes:, Our sun (sol) has a luminosity of 380 septillion watts or 3.8 times 10 to the power of 26 watts. The smaller red dwarfs can be 10 thousand times less bright than sol, meaning 38 sextillion watts, or 3.8 times 10 to the power of 22 watts. Assuming a very conservative 20 percent efficiency in the solar satellites, (not counting slight light lost through gaps between satellites, which seems minimal), 38 sextillion watts divided by 5 (,to give 20 percent,) gives 7.6 Sextillion watts of electrical power).
Franklin conceded that that sounded like quite a lot of power.
"Well to be COMPLETELY honest, that figure is only an average, the luminosity fluctuates SO wildly with random huge sun spots and sudden solar flares, that the Dark Mechanicum officially named the star "You-Bitch" in response. (The name started as a joke but kinda stuck)," TigerLily added amusedly.
"You-Bitch?", Franklin asked.
"Yeah, like they will be just getting extremely good output and starting some massive power heavy projects, then BAM, a bunch of huge sun spots will come along and lower light output for entire weeks. When that happens, the Dark Mechanicum members look at the star and shout "YOU BITCH"!" TigerLily laughed.
"Well, it will still be enough power right?," Franklin asked.
"Yep, 'twill be. Of course, the Dark Mechanicum will not be entirely happy to part with all this power, not happy at all to part with even 1 percent of it," TigerLily smirked.
"However, the Matriarch can be rather... "Persuasive", at getting them to cooperate, I don't think it will be a problem," Wendy chuckled nastily.
"What could these heretic tech priests even DO with so much power as a billion terawatts?!" Sister Mary piped in cautiously.
"Oh you would be surprised how quickly that power can be used up, the vast bulk of it goes to their vast shipyard facilities making huge cruisers and battle cruisers and other big ships, all these orbital steel works and forges and smelters and foundries, they suck in watts like you wouldn't believe. ESPECIALLY if they are working with ceramite and similar high grade armoured materials. At these scales a terawatt seems like little more than a single watt of power, the Matriarch is actually currently working to vastly expand the existing power generation to meet the insane demands," Wendy explained with the feverish excitement of an administration nerd.
"In that case will there be enough to conquer the wicked Eldar aliens?," Sister Mary asked dubiously.
Belzevelle grunted at her race being called "wicked", but was silenced by a look from Wendy.
"To answer your question, the orbital shipwright facilities will have to be put on standby and powered down as much as possible, as well as everything else that is not urgently needed. Low Commorragh is of such high priority to Slaanesh and the Matriarch that it will be given first priority in the power distribution." Wendy explained calmly.
"Wendy my dear, it is time to launch the web way gate satellite," TigerLily gently interrupted.
"Yes Mistress TigerLily! SLUTS! Launch the web way gate satellite!" Wendy yelled with perfect obedience.
"Yes Mistress Wendy, satellite is launched!" One of the women called from a control cogitator.
Franklin couldn't see or hear anything to indicate a satellite being launched, and looked to his mother curiously.
"The satellite needs to lose enough speed to join a stable orbit with the swarm of solar collectors. The Nightmare Asylum is traveling too fast for this, so the satellite was launched from our rear and is firing a booster rocket engine in the opposite direction to our engines. You would have to look out the back to see it," His mother Wendy explained.
"The satellite does what exactly?," Sister Mary asked.
"It is just a small gate that we can feed some super high capacity power cables through, to connect the swarm of orbiting solar satellites to Low Commorragh. The gate satellite will be connected to one of the solar satellites to join the grid. The solar satellites mostly use wireless power transmission to move their power around to each other, those that share the same exact orbit are also connected together by wires, like huge wired together rings encircling the star, each ring slightly differently orientated and slightly differently sized, letting every ring overlap around "You-Bitch" to capture the vast majority of the light." Wendy explained.
Sister Mary nodded dubiously, somewhat understanding the explanation.
"Well now that that's done, we can use a little warp hop to get home sweet home," TigerLily tittered.
The Sevensons all trembled fearfully.
"Time to go see the Matriarch," TigerLily laughed mischievously.
***...
A few minutes later the Nightmare Asylum was dropping out of the warp in seemingly the absolute middle of nowhere, just dark and empty space, with only the faintest hint of dull magenta glowing in the background.
Franklin and his nuns looked around disappointedly, seeing nothing at all of any interest.
With a sudden start, a communication vox blared loudly on an instrument panel on the bridge.
"Unidentified vessel! You have entered the restricted naval exclusion zone of the Sevenson Night Lord Domains! Identify yourself immediately and transmit a valid encrypted security code or you will be fired upon! You have 60 seconds to comply starting now!" A stern female voice demanded over the vox.
Wendy replied instantly, "Sevenson space traffic control this is Slaanesh Champion Wendy Sevenson talking, this vessel is the Nightmare Asylum. Transmitting encrypted security code now."
Brief pause
"Security code is valid and is the most recent code, drop your shields and power down all weapons, you have 60 seconds to comply," the stern female voice demanded, with a faintly less hostile tone now.
"SLUTS! Drop the shields and cut power to the weapons! (Whip crack), ok Sevenson space traffic control, complying now," Wendy responded.
Long pause.
"Scan complete, vessel identified as Sevenson flagship "the Nightmare Asylum", Daemon Princess TigerLily Sevenson also detected onboard. Scan detects unsafe weight of cargo aboard, also your primary reactor cooling system is giving off heat above recommended tolerances. The Matriarch is being informed of your arrival, stand by for further orders," the vox replied.
The Sevensons all visibly flinched at the mention of the Matriarch.
Very long pause.
"The Matriarch is expecting you, clearance granted. You will follow orbital docking protocol gamma and dock at heavy docking pier 18, the optimal flight path is being transmitted to your cogitators now. Welcome home," the vox said warmly.
"Good to be home, following flight path now. See you soon," Wendy replied with equal warmth.
Franklin still couldn't see a thing in the space outside, it was just completely empty.
For a long time there was nothing at all.
And then Franklin saw a tiny orange glowing sphere, far far ahead, just a little dot...
The dot suddenly eclipsed behind something for a few moments?
The orange dot reappeared again, and seemed to get brighter and suddenly change direction with savage speed?
The dot got bigger and bigger as they flew towards it, taking shape as a globe of glowing orange, was it a star?
"What is that?," Franklin asked, pointing to the globe.
"That is the moon that orbits the planet Dark Tropic, the moon glows because of extreme tidal forces, it orbits too close to the planet in a highly elliptical orbit. It is composed of glowing hot iron, all the other components of the moon were ripped away by the tidal forces, we call the moon "Burning Hell" because of it's extreme heat," Franklin's father Luke answered.
"Are we going to live on this "Burning Hell" moon?," Franklin asked, horrified.
"No, we are going to Dark Tropic, the planet Burning Hell orbits. Look closely over there and you will see it," Luke said pointing.
Franklin peered in the direction pointed, and just made out a dark grey ball, visible only on the side nearest to the glowing light of Burning Hell.
The planet and moon got bigger and bigger as they got closer, and Franklin could soon see both quite clearly.
The moon of course was just glowing orange iron, with very little noticeable features visible, just the odd crater from past meteor impacts. But the planet had no features at all...
The planet was nothing but a dark grey haze, nothing visible except for the very top of the dark atmosphere. Franklin saw no surface features of any kind, just the non distinct dark grey thick haze.
"Dark Tropic, isn't it beautiful?. Barely a photon of visible light penetrates through the upper atmosphere, but the Burning Hell still keeps it warm and balmy through savage tidal heating. It is a tropical paradise of scattered volcano islands in a vast warm sea, just beautiful. The atmosphere has been processed to make it breathable, you can just stroll along idyllic shorelines and beaches in the dark." Luke said proudly.
"Volcanoes?! But aren't they extremely dangerous?," Franklin erupted. (Pun intended)
"We put huge pipes down them to let the lava flow safely away offshore in the pipes, it is safely dumped in the sea," Luke reassured him.
"What kind of incredibly advanced material did you find to pipe such hot lava?!" Sister Mary exclaimed in wonder.
"Um, common steel with a bit of plating to prevent rust... How hot do you think lava actually is?," Luke replied amusedly.
"But but but, how can that BE?! Everyone knows that lava can melt nearly anything!" Sister Mary exclaimed.
"Well then ",everyone," is an idiot who doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about. Lava is a dull red glowing colour, when steel and iron and a shit ton of other metals glow dull red they don't actually melt. The lava colour would have to be white hot to melt steel. The red merely very slightly softens the steel, so we made the pipes extra thick to compensate," Luke chuckled.
"Why is the colour important?," Mother Superior requested.
"Never heard of Black Body Radiation?, Basic physics?, Obviously not. Try reading a physics book one day instead of scripture," Luke mocked her.
Mother Superior muttered but said nothing more.
For a while everyone watched the view. Some people murmured among themselves, but most just watched the planet getting closer and closer.
Faint dots then came into view, absolutely tiny in comparison to the planet, but rapidly becoming bigger, revealing their true size.
Franklin peered at the dots, and made out huge chaos cruisers and space stations orbiting the planet. He made out vast orbital weapon batteries, gargantuan rotating cylinders that Luke said were space hive cities. Huge civilian vessels, massive orbiting fuel tanks, satellites and installations beyond count.
Franklin was astonished by the sheer SCALE of the space infrastructure in place around this unassuming planet. The swarm of solar satellites around the star had been bigger by far, but those had seemed to be composed of little more than wire mesh and aluminium tinfoil. These installations orbiting the planet on the other hand were properly constructed high tech facilities, made from proper materials and heavily armoured.
Hugest of all were vast orbiting dishes made of some sort of metal mesh, all carefully oriented in the same direction, presumably towards the star. Luke quietly confirmed this and said that these received concentrated microwave beams from the distant solar swarm, as wireless long distance power transmission.
The orange glow from Burning Hell illuminated everything with faint light, showing off this space infrastructure in all it's terrible glory. Mirrored foil dishes of all sizes tracked the motion of Burning Hell, concentrating the orange light onto small solar panels to generate a bit of extra free power for the various installations they were attached to.
"Why not simply encircle Burning Hell in solar satellites like the star?," Franklin asked curiously.
"Too much orbital disturbance from close encounters with the planet. We are barely able to keep satellites orbiting the planet itself. Orbiting the moon for any long time is just impossible, the tidal forces would fling objects out of their orbits." Luke explained.
Franklin nodded, this sounded reasonable.
The Nightmare Asylum was getting very close to the orbiting facilities now, and was slowly moving towards a vast space port facility with several other ships docked to it, both big and small ships.
The Nightmare Asylum was barely moving now, and was apparently performing extremely delicate manoeuvring to dock with the vast space port without bumping into it.
"Come, we are in an automated docking cycle now. The daemonettes bound into the systems of the Nightmare Asylum will handle everything from here forward. Humans are no longer needed at this point, let's go home," Wendy told the bridge with a huge sigh.
"What about all our belongings?," Franklin asked as people began leaving the bridge.
"The slaves will take care of transferring everything for us. It will be delivered to our dwellings down on the surface. I have a grand palace down on the surface, far bigger and nicer than my humble dwelling on the Nightmare Asylum. I have plenty of room for you my son," Wendy reassured him.
Franklin accepted this assurance, and joined the Sevensons in walking towards the nearest huge docking tube door.
The Sevensons chatted excitedly with each other as they walked in a tight huddle through the ship, taking several huge elevators to speed the journey to one of the port side cargo doors.
They found a mass of excited convicts and demon hosts already huddled excitedly in front of the door waiting to leave, many of them obviously carrying gold ingots and other contraband, others holding crude lamps to see with.
The Nightmare Asylum made a long series of clunks and rumbles as it completely docked with the space port, it wasn't a fast process.
Franklin was just starting to get bored when the huge door finally opened with a few mechanical noises.
Complete blackness greeted them on the other side of the doorway, and the convicts used their lamps to illuminate the docking tube beyond.
The entire crowd, possibly hundreds of thousands counting the late coming people who had joined the line behind the Sevensons, all of these people walked forward into the huge space port.
Franklin could see fine with so many convict lamps, and saw a vast internal port terminal, with huge cargo loading equipment and trucks parked everywhere on the mostly open space, a vast flat floor over a kilometre across, with little commercial stalls and information centres scattered all around this vast gloomy space.
Locals with squinting eyes shied away from the light, looking in pain, and hissed at the convicts to keep the light from their eyes.
The Sevensons stayed together in a huddle as the convicts spread out to explore, and the Sevensons moved with purpose towards one of the distant innumerable exit corridors. Franklin and his nuns followed the Sevensons, staying right in the middle of the huddle.
The Sevensons went through the exit and came to a faintly lit train terminal of some sort?
The entire extended family loaded into a single massive train that was apparently waiting just for them, spreading down the long platform to find room in every carriage.
The moment the Sevensons all entered, the doors closed before the convicts could follow, and the train departed, speeding along a rail tunnel with barely a sound.
The train was standing room only, and Octavia was causing problems for other passengers with her lust aura. Franklin and his nuns kept well clear of Octavia...
The train came to a platform and slowed down, and when it stopped the doors opened and the entire group exited the train.
Franklin could barely see a thing and simply followed the crowd through dark surroundings, not sure where he was.
Soon Franklin and his nuns were walking through a docking tube with the Sevensons, boarding some sort of huge space shuttle.
The shuttle was lit just enough to see, and had thousands of large chairs inside it, all arranged in rows with extremely long walkways between every 4 or so chairs.
Franklin and his nuns all took seats and used the safety buckles they found.
It took a while to board everyone, but not as long as you might think. Without preamble the doors closed and locked, the shuttle went through an undocking cycle, and then simply dropped down through an opening below it, down into space, and flying down towards the planet.
They were about to go home...
***...
