I'm getting to the ME bit, honest.
"-once. Wait, what?"
Something had happened.
It had felt rather like a blink, only instead of the usual way around of it happening - which was to say, Jarrion blinking - it had been like the whole universe had blinked at him. The experience had been thoroughly disorientating, and not just for Jarrion from the looks of things, either. Someone on the bridge vomited.
Just as automatically as the alarms and klaxons and emergency lighting had come on, they all automatically turned off again, and normality of a kind resumed.
"Wha- damage! Damage report! What happened?" Jarrion asked, taking a second to recover himself and assert some authority. This seemed to snap everyone else back to the moment as well.
"No damage, Lord Captain," came the response from another crew member on another console.
"No damage?" Jarrion repeated, appalled and astonished. "No damage? How can that be? Check again! All systems! Everything! Anything looks so much as a hair off of perfect you tell me!"
"There's nothing, Lord Captain. The Assertive is sound and unharmed," the same crew member said, a tinge of desperation entering their voice at having to be the bearer of unusually good bad news.
Jarrion - bereft - turned to Pak, who shrugged.
"What in the Emperor's name…" Jarrion hissed to himself. His eyes then wandered to the pictscreen, which was still showing nominally the same view as before. Or at least it should have been. Jarrion gestured to it angrily.
"And where's the wreck gone? And where are we?"
The stars outside now were not the stars that had been outside some seconds previously, and there was also now a planet where there had not been one before. A gas giant, in fact, that they appeared to be in stable orbit around. Because why not?
No answers were forthcoming, which was hardly a surprise.
Jarrion took a steadying breath.
"Alright. Okay. Time for a brief emergency meeting, senior bridge personnel to attend. And you, Pak. Someone send for Altrx and tell him he is required. Torian, Thale, let's go," he said, turning and leaving, Torian having to shuffle extra quickly to keep up, Thale was already two steps behind him.
Thale being Jarrion's bodyguard, who had been standing silently beside the Lord Captain's command throne the whole while this had been happening, entirely unflappable.
Thale, a man who had quite literally fought against every major race the Imperium was currently at war with, was the only non-essential person in the room. From Tau to Tyranids and everything in between, Thale had fought and killed them.
He'd even fought against daemons on more than one occasion, something which was well-known to be more than the bluster of a professional warrior.
How the man had evaded the Inquisition and was still around to tell these tales was anyone's guess. Slipped through the cracks, Jarrion supposed, a fact for which he was personally profoundly grateful. Thale might have scared him, but Jarrion knew he scared other people more, and for very good reason - and not just people, either. He scared most things.
It took Jarrion a brisk walk and a short ride on a conveyor to reach the room in which he was to hold his emergency meeting. Pak was not far behind, and the others arrived not long after that.
The meeting room - and it really was a room, torn from a venerable location and placed at great expense onto the ship - was exceedingly luxurious, as could well be expected. Every piece of furniture practically gleamed, everything was old, everything was expensive. The chairs were not comfortable, and were arranged around a long table carved from the wood of a planet that no longer existed.
Jarrion sat at the head of this table, Thale standing behind him, Torian to his immediate right. Pak was also presently, along with the ship's actual head Tech Priest, Magos Blix. The two were conversing, Binaric apparently not counting under Pak's vow of silence. The Navigator Altrx was sat a little further along from Torian, staring into space, and beyond them were several other, lesser members of the ship's staff - the Master at Arms, for one, a handful of petty and warrant officers, and so on.
People there to answer questions if Jarrion had them, basically.
Checking his chronometer Jarrion felt he'd allowed those present enough time to settle in and then tucked the thing away again, clearing his throat and bringing the low-level hubbub that had been going on to an immediate halt.
Barring the two Magi, who ignored him. Not unexpected.
"Alright. Circumstances are unusual. According to what I've heard the Assertive itself is running entirely normal, is that the case?" Jarrion asked and Blix paused in their conversation with Pak long enough to nod. That was about as much as Jarrion knew he could hope for right now, but it spoke volumes and satisfied him so he didn't mind.
"Good. And what is the condition of the crew?"
This he directed towards the gaggle of lesser officers who exchanged a quick, hushed discussion over who should answer. They settled on a senior officer who Jarrion knew by sight if not by name - something he really should have got around to correcting by now, he told himself.
Early days, was his excuse. Not that that would have flown with father, obviously.
"The crew are entirely unaware of anything untoward or unusual having happened, Lord Captain," said the officer.
"Good, keep it that way," Jarrion said, and the officers all nodded understanding.
That was something, at least.
"Right. With immediate concerns out of the way let's move onto the merely pressing concerns," Jarrion said with a sigh. "Firstly, finding out where we are is priority. Plainly we're in real space but equally plainly we are not where we were, so how far were we flung off-course and how long is it going to take to get us back to where we're meant to be. Navigator Altrx?"
"It's gone," the Navigator said, more to themselves than to anyone else. As aloof as the Navigator was - more-or-less about what you might expect from someone of their rank and station - Jarrion had never seen Altrx look quite so detached.
"What's gone?" Jarrion asked.
"The Astronomicon. It's not there."
Silence. The uncomfortable kind.
The Astronomicon disappearing wasn't exactly unheard of, of course. There were remote and distant parts of the Emperor's domains where the light sometimes only reached sporadically or so weakly that it was difficult to locate.
There were also dark and occluded spots here and there where - for one reason or another - it also failed to reached. A risk Rogue Traders were aware of, though one that Jarrion had not personally ever encountered.
First time for everything. He cleared his throat.
"Well, all things considered it's not the worst thing that could have happened given what we went through - and survived, I remind you all! I assume you have charts available to help us plot a route back to a less benighted and forgotten spot of space?" Jarrion asked.
"That's not all," the Navigator said, rubbing their face.
"Oh?"
"The Warp is also calm."
Jarrion smiled.
"Is that so? Our luck may be turning then!"
"Perhaps I wasn't as clear as I should have been. The Warp is calm. Almost completely calm. As close to still as I think it might be possible for it to get. I have never - never - seen it like this. I didn't even know it could be like this."
More silence. Jarrion swallowed, shifted, and put his smile back on.
"Altrx, my dear friend," he said. "Bear in mind that I am not a Navigator and so perhaps am not as experienced with the technical side of things as you are. Could you maybe run through that again rather more simply? For the benefit of us laypeople."
"The Warp is never calm. There are places where you might find it to be calmer, but never calm. Never. It just doesn't happen."
The Navigator sounded both outraged and oddly despondent about this, as though life itself were playing some kind of cruel joke on them. They appeared inches from actually sulking. It was disarming. Jarrion cleared his throat.
"Does this make your job difficult?" He asked.
The Navigator scowled.
"A touch difficult. If I had an idea of our location I might be able to use the better known routes to maneuver us. In the absence of the Astronomicon it seems our best option. Imprecise and clumsy, but better by far than simply plunging in a random direction and hoping for the best," they said.
"Have Astronavigation determine our location at once," Jarrion said and off a House servant went at a dash. Various such servants lined the perimeter of the room for this very reason, hands behind their backs, silent and unmoving.
It was inefficient to send runners in such a way, but the room was far too valuable to modify for external communication - it had been in the family for generations! Installed in the Assertive as a sign of magnanimous favour from father himself! Almost as old as the Imperium, if that could be believed, and still in fine condition!
Jarrion had had the illustrious history of the room and all its fixtures and fittings explained to him more than once in his lifetime. He'd actually found it quite interesting, but was by-the-by.
While they waited, Jarrion again turned to Altrx.
"Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but I would have thought a calm Warp would have made for smoother sailing," he asked. The logic of this seemed fairly clear, but Jarrion would have been the first to admit he wasn't an expert on the details.
It was fairly obvious to all present that the Navigator was biting back on harsher words than they eventually came out with.
"With the Warp as it is travel would be as simple as crossing a room but - unfortunately - with no points of reference that room is pitch-black. And hundreds of miles across. And I don't know where the door is," Altrx said, diplomatically.
"Ah. I see," said Jarrion.
Awkward silence. No-one seemed to know what to do next. Then Jarrion snapped his fingers, making Torian jump. He had been starting to nod off.
"Communications! Of course. Why didn't I think of that sooner? We'll message - not to signal distress, just to test the waters, see what's nearby. Can the Choirmaster be told to come to this meeting at once, if he'd be so kind. As a matter of urgency."
Phrased as a request. Not actually a request. Another crew member nodded and went running off.
Continued awkward silence.
"Anything like this ever happen to you before, Torian?" Jarrion asked after a few excruciating minutes.
"No, my Lord."
A surprise, though not a huge one. Jarrion had rather hoped that something similar might have happened, if only to plumb the old man for ideas. No such luck.
"Ah. Shame."
Some minutes later the crew member who'd been sent to message Astronavigation returned. They hadn't run all the way there, obviously, rather they'd only run to the communications suite which was a little way down from the luxurious meeting room. Still, they were back sooner than Jarrion had expected.
"Lord Captain," said the crew member, bowing briefly.
"That was quick," said Jarrion, frowning.
"Yes, Lord Captain. Sorry, Lord Captain. I was told to relay to you that Astronavigation has a rough idea of where we are."
This was not quite what Jarrion had expected to hear. His frown intensified.
"Rough? How can it be rough? They do see the stars outside, do they not? We left port with sufficient charts, as I recall," Jarrion said. He had made sure of that, at no little expense either. He liked to be prepared.
"They do, Lord Captain, it is just that…"
Jarrion had the distinct impression he was about to be told something else that was to his disadvantage and sighed preemptively, resting his face in one hand. The crew member shifted uncomfortably and Jarrion waved for them to continue.
"Just that what?" He asked.
"They report that while many star formations appear similar to those in our records, many others do not. This has confused their efforts somewhat, Lord Captain."
"I imagine it would," Jarrion said flatly, face still in his hand, eyes closed. Today was going to be like this, he felt. A long string of things not going to plan or just being wrong.
There came the sound of the door opening again and Jarrion glanced up through his fingers.
There stood an Astropath, but not the Choirmaster.
"You're not the Choirmaster," said Jarrion, pointing. The Astropath gave a smile and a slight forward incline of her head. Not so much a nod or a bow or anything, really. Certainly not the sort of reaction Jarrion would have expected.
"The Choirmaster is indisposed," was all she said before walking right on in. Everyone was too flabbergasted by this breach of protocol to do anything about it, right up until she arrived at an empty chair and plopped herself down in it.
This was taking the piss.
"Is there a particular reason you've sat down? At this table? With us? Would you benefit from, perhaps, having the rank system on board this ship explained to you?" Jarrion asked, trying to sound casual, glancing to Thale who gave the slightest of nods to signal he was ready to expel her or at least unseat her.
If the Astropath was at all nervous about any of this she gave no sign. If anything she just seemed happier, small smile growing larger as she leant forward across the table, arms tucking into her robes.
"I have a small confession to make. I don't think you'll be pleased to see me."
Jarrion's patience, though considerable compared to most of his social standing, was not without limits.
"Why's that? I was under the impression I was already seeing you, or is there something else today that I'm missing? Come on, what else can go wrong?"
She held out a hand in front of her, facing up, resting on the table.
Sitting there in her palm, perfectly innocuous, was an Inquisitorial rosette.