Here's chapter 5. It's the shortest chapter yet, sorry for that. Unlike some, I'm not a fast writer so chapter 12 is almost done having taken about 4-5 weeks, and don't worry it is longer than this one. At least a bit. For those who commented, first; thank you, second; all my warhammer knowledge comes from the wiki and other fanfics so if you see any mistakes I'm always eager for any info you can give me. Same thing for the Halo fans. I try to mash it all in a somewhat coherent shape but that's not always easy.
Chapter 5: Silver lining
With all the horrible things that were most likely going to kill me sooner or later all set in a neat row, it was now time to look at the positives.
The database that got shoved into my head was that of the Forerunners. A civilisation that was every bit as old as the Necrons, except that they stayed awake for the millions upon millions of years they've existed.
This meant that their technology was impressive. Very impressive.
The two most important things that were incredibly difficult for all the other races; FTL travel and communication, were very simple to me. Slipspace travel went fast, and the chance of arriving before you left, or any other type of temporal shenanigans happening was almost zero. Quite unlike using a warpdrive, where you literally went through hell and prayed that you were going to make it all the way along. Communicating between two distant points was done by the Forerunners with quantum entanglement. It was instantaneous over any distance, and impossible to intercept. Human communication between star systems basically came down to telepaths 'shouting' at each other.
Another point that I had going for me was construction time. Building robots, spaceships or even planetary superstructures took anywhere from minutes for the small bots to at most a few days for the larger ships. The other factions, if they even still could make all their tech, took years for even the smallest things. From what I remembered, the Imperials were the worst at that, taking decades to make even small ships.
I was going to need those benefits to survive out there. The Imperials might need decades to build ships, but depending on when I was, they have had millennia to build them. Millenia of tens of thousands of worlds building ships near continuously, meant that even with the long assembly time there was going to be a lot of ships out there.
A lot of ships, from all the diverse factions, who all had a 'shoot first, ask questions later, if ever'-mentality. Necrons wanted to kill anyone who wasn't a Necron, Tyranids would eat anything that wasn't fast enough at getting away, Eldar would kill you because you're a 'lesser' being, Imperials would fire unless you're visibly human and well-known, Orks, well, they're Orks so they'll shoot you too.
The trick then, was to not meet all those ships. This lead into the next plus from having Forerunner technology. Forerunners were stuck-up bastards, and had no interest in those they considered lesser than them. Which was basically everyone. So, they didn't want to be bothered by those 'lessers' when they were going about their business. This meant that all their ships had very impressive cloaking systems. I fiercely hoped that those systems, which I had found in their entirety in my database (thank you, Halo), were good enough to keep me invisible to everyone else until I was good and ready. Which honestly might be when I'm several galaxies that-away. At least the complete Halo designs were useful for something other than mass death. Even if it was just the systems meant to hide away the massive murdermachine.
All of this also meant that I was going to need to seriously rethink my unit designs. Everything had to be armed, cloaked and shielded, or it was just inviting someone to take a shot at them. This universe was brutal, and someone who didn't have a massive army at their beck and call wouldn't be taken seriously at all. The tentative plans I had for larger construction robots and even some doodles for spaceships could go straight to the bin. They didn't have nearly enough weapons.
The problem with wanting all my units to be armed, shielded and cloaked was that I didn't have any arms, shields or cloaks for anything smaller than a spaceship. Forerunners were very good at big, as in, building-a-planet big, but not so much for the small scale. Anything smaller than a corvette was so easy to produce en-masse that it simply wasn't worth worrying about how long they would survive battles. From the little history I had, the lifespan of corvettes and fighters in space battles was usually measured in minutes. Since they were all just AI controlled it didn't matter to the Forerunners that they died that quickly.
Battles with less than a couple thousand ships on either side weren't even counted as a true battle by those Forerunner pricks. Having a galaxy spanning empire for so long meant that they had resources beyond what most people could even comprehend. Just about the only reason the 'upstart' humans hadn't been wiped out with ease was their tactical genius, sheer grit and their savage desire not to go gently unto that long night. Even with all that, and technology that matched and even here and there surpassed their enemies the most important reason they lasted so long was that the Forerunners were too arrogant to take the fight seriously.
I sincerely hoped that that sort of civilisations wasn't what was waiting for me, but it did make very clear what sorts of things were possible out there. So, everything being shielded, cloaked and armed in case they were found anyway despite all my precautions, was a minimal requirement, not a fanciful embellishment.
Before I got down to designing I had to think about what I wanted to do once I got out of here. That that was going to happen was now certain, I had too much knowledge that could be used for good purposes to just stay in this dark hole. Once I was out, there was going to be lots and lots of people wanting me dead and I needed a plan on how I was going to deal with them. It may seem presumptuous, to plan how to take on a galaxy, but with a month of building time and some resources I could have a fleet of warships equal to anything anyone out there could field.
If it was still the time of the War in Heaven, I was just going to make the fastest ship I could and move to a satellite galaxy, or maybe go even further until it's over. There was no way that I was going to tangle with that. If there's humans out there, I was going to help them in any way I could. I might not be a human anymore physically and maybe not even mentally with what that Forerunner did to me. Spiritually however, I was still human, and that was not going to change. I was sent here in apology of what the Forerunners did to the humans of the Halo Universe. Like hell was I going to let that opportunity go to waste.
One of the biggest problems I could see that this galaxy had, was the constant battle with the Orks. That living plague of destruction had no use other than destroying things and were very difficult to get rid of. They were everywhere as well. Wiping out as many Orks as I could was something I could happily spend the next few millennia doing. I was pretty sure I would be very effective too. Forerunner sensors should be good enough to detect every bit of their DNA on a planet, which with Ork spores was necessary to fully get rid of them. Once I had more data on Orks than what I remembered from trawling through the wikis back home I could make a more detailed plan of attack.
Speaking of Orks, I was going to use their tactics against them. I had to spread fast and become a fixture in an entire galaxy if I wanted to have any influence. Even with everything I had going for me, and leaving out all those wanting to kill me, this was still a tall order. The galaxy was big. Mind-boggingly, stupendously huge, to be more exact. I had to go from a few bots to 'rival several hostile galactic empires' as soon as possible. The Ork spores and interconnected biosphere that they brought along to everywhere they went was at its core a very impressive and successful strategy. This was easy to see in the many millions of years they survived despite being universally stupid and equally universally hated by anyone they had ever come across that weren't other Orks. I was going to do the same thing, albeit with a Forerunner twist or two.
I sincerely hoped it would be good enough, because the galaxy -or at least humanity- may very well depend on it. No pressure, you know?
That vacation to the Andromeda galaxy was starting to look very niceā¦
