After showing us the outer part of the Divine Retribution, Null brought us both back upstairs to another underground dome on the eighth floor. By then, I had become fairly drunk, and was giggling at how absurd my situation was.
Just a few days ago, I had been showing art in Newark, New Jersey until some asshole poisoned me, making me almost die and letting Tzeentch get his greedy tentacles on my soul, planting me in this terrifying universe that no fan fiction person ever wants to find themselves in.
The dome was very dimly lit from an unknown source, and about fifty meters in diameter. At its center was some kind of wide cylinder of an dark metal that didn't reflect any light that reached to about chest length. My echoing giggles were apparently inappropriate to the tech-priest in here, and as we approached the center of the space, Null abruptly turned around, his body language tense. I stopped giggling. This guy was moodier than a high school goth kid, damn.
"Look, I-I'm sorry but I have no idea how to fly that ship, Null," I said, shaking my head, still nervously and drunkenly laughing. "I'll sit down and it'll eat me like Virgil, yep. Hope you have a guidebook on how to fly these things, because I didn't read about any Golden Throne eagle ships in the lore anywhere."
"You seem to be intoxicated," he dryly stated to me, ignoring my alcohol-induced rambling. In the very dim light of this space, Null's eyes were illuminated with a violet light. The dim lighting and the silhouettes of his many mechadendrites made him somewhat look like a super villain from a comic movie.
"And you seem to be like Doctor Octopus with all that metal shit on you, you know that?" I said, and began laughing at my own unfunny observation. He didn't actually look like Doctor Octopus, and my observation was not funny.
"Who is this 'Doctor Octopus'? I do not recognize the name. A rival I should be aware of?"
I shook my head. He just wasn't getting it. I belched and started talking again. "Not unless he came here from his own universe, but maybe he did, so who knows? He's from Spiderman, but you guys wouldn't know about that stuff out here in the grim darkness of this future. I get it, man. Daemons, Tyranids, Inquisitors, it all just fucking sucks. No offense, but this universe really sucks. No fun allowed here, putting people on thrones and roasting them. You probably can't date the toaster you want because Mars said it wasn't kosher, blah blah blah."
Alberich was by my side, and he was suppressing a laugh with his funny German blue bird head. "Just a little too much alcohol. A good thing we did not attempt to fly the Divine Retribution a short time ago." I considered for a second that Alberich would probably be a huge hit back home in the furry community. Would he be classified as a furry or a feathery? Hmmm.
The tech-priest made an annoyed chuffing sound. "Well, you need to be sober for this, no matter who or what you are! This is important, Traveler!" Null scolded. So this jerk was getting mad at me for drinking the alcohol he gave me. Okay.
"Sure, just get me a Gatorade and slice of cheese from Ray's. Fixes me right up all the time," I said, suddenly craving a pizza again. I really did miss pizza.
Impossibly fast, one of the tech-priest's mechadendrites flashed outward, and struck me in the neck with a pinch. "Ouch! What the Hell?" I said. A warm sensation began to spread from where I was struck, and immediately, I felt the urge to vomit. I was able to get back to the passage we came from and puke all over the grated floor.
Alberich had rushed to my side, and I could hear him yell "What have you done?" in the direction of the tech-priest as I vomited amasec all over the place. It was over quickly, and I straightened up. I then discovered that I was now completely sober. I could see the Tzaangor snarling fiercely at the tech-priest.
"What did you do?" I asked, holding an angry Alberich by his arm so he wouldn't rush Null and get himself killed doing so.
"A simple injection that neutralizes common intoxicants. Always good to have on hand for when fleshlings are imbibing."
The fact that he had done this without asking me first upset me. "Null, if you want to work with people you can't just do things like randomly injecting someone with drugs without asking them for permission."
"You're well now, so that's what matters," he said curtly, turning back around and walking briskly toward the center of the room. "We need to move quickly unless you desire a new existence in the belly of a daemon, as this planet does not have much time left."
Alberich supported me with an arm, and we followed the tech-priest to the wide cylinder in the center of the room. No fun allowed, indeed.
Null was now standing next to the dark shape, and from here, I could see that it had a curved glass top and was about a meter wide. I could see from behind that it appeared to be typing something, or manipulating some kind of machine. As we came with a few steps of him, the tech-priest said, "Stay right there, I've almost..."
Suddenly, the dome room was filled with numerous holographic representations of stars, planets, nebulae, and various other stellar objects. Alberich backed up in fright away from the tech-priest, apparently not understanding any of this.
"Oh!" I said, reaching for a tiny map of a star system ahead of me, planets rotating and asteroids dipping in their orbits around their stars. Similar holograms were repeated all throughout the dark domed room, and I realized that we were looking a holographic star map. I watched Alberich try to grab what appeared to be a ringed planet in curiosity, only to see it pass right through his fingers.
"One moment, let me adjust this," Null said, and the view pulled backward until we were looking at a representation of the entire Milky Way! There were areas of red discoloring certain places like wounds, and one western area of the galaxy was almost completely covered in a red hologram. This domed room was apparently a sort of large three dimensional map of the galaxy.
"The Eye of Terror!" I said, amazed and frightened at the same time. "Look how big it is! And this space here, this is the Maelstrom, am I right?"
"Ah, to live in a universe where our terrors and tribulations are but mere stories and games, and to learn all about our Hell for entertainment. How I envy your past, Traveler," Null tutted. He did something with the machine that caused one area to the far upper right of the holographic map to magnify, which also revealed an index. I saw the name "Levant" briefly highlighted, and the map moved and adjusted itself until we were looking at a star with five planets circling in their orbits, each marked with a name. Levant and its star were both simply named "Levant". The other planets appeared to be small lifeless things, only depicted with a few pixels and very few notes. The planet we were on was the second from the sun, and didn't appear to have a moon. The hologram illustrated that this system also had at least a few highly elliptical comets or asteroids roping around the sun in very long orbits. What I didn't enjoy seeing was another swath of threatening red encroaching from the south, even appearing to cause one of the comets to circle through a faint part of it at its apogee. That probably wasn't good. I saw a word designating the red area as "Malefactus".
"This planet has been my home for a thousand years now, and as you can see from the encroaching influence of the Malefactus Warp rift, we do not have much time. In addition to this, I have stated before that Levant itself seems to be the center point of weakening of reality. It is probably why you are even able to be here, Erika. You were only able to come to this world due to this unique phenomena. Perhaps whoever built these blackstone pylons knew that this particular world would become part of a tear in time and space, and attempted to stop it. Fate does not barter with even the mightiest of us, I suppose."
"If reality is weak here, is it possible that I could just find a way to go back home on this world somewhere? If I got through, there has to be a way back." I questioned.
"If only it were that easy. The tidal forces surrounding this weak point are like a whirlpool, and are tearing reality asunder as time advances. The pylons keep the Warp energy enveloping it in check, but we are looking at the birth of another anomaly similar to the Hadex, only smaller, if you understand what that is. To put it simply for your less efficient, fleshy brains, if you managed to survive the shredding of all your atoms into eternity, you would have no choice on what reality you would be spat out in or at what time. Only with a stable Gate to the Deep Warp can you hope to make such a precise jump back to your own reality."
"Where are we going after this planet?" Alberich asked. "It sounds as if we sit upon a time bomb. Where can we flee?"
Null responded by expanding the map slightly, illustrating a few other points of interest. The red area bleeding from the Malefactus Warp rift still covered a lot of the space here. To the east southeast of Levant, a planet named Quilan was marked. As this world was highlighted, a number appeared between the two planets, noting "210.67 light years". The red area seemed to flee from this planet, as if it were protected. A strange symbol marked it, appearing like a triangle atop a staff broken with a few lines. Null pointed at it with a mechadendrite. "While Quilan is a pleasantly clean world and offers shelter from the Warp, we would not be welcome. It is an Exodite world of the Aeldari, and they were never too pleased when they saw our fleet in the local area."
"What are the Aeldari?" Alberich asked. Wow, Alberich really didn't have a handle on the greater galaxy, did he?
"Aliens. I'll tell you later," I responded to him as I saw Null adjust the map once again, pulling back.
The map was still filled with a terrible amount of shimmering holographic crimson. It appeared that going directly south or southwest was a bad idea, as it was completely engulfed in a sea of red. To the southwest, a dark planet named "Obsidian Reach" spun hatefully near the edge of the crimson bruise, 370.19 light years away from our present location. Its symbol was an eight pointed star, so I wasn't surprised when Null said, "No, not a nice place to visit. Daemon world. A place of eternal darkness carved out of solid black glass, where daemonic things dwell that see with sound and listen with emotion. In all this time, I have not seen any outward activity from that foul place, and it seems to be contained within itself. While our route brings us close, we will definitely not be stopping there. But, fear not! I have mapped a route for our escape."
Null paused, tapping his fingers nervously on the console, and expanded the view even further. Directly to the west, there was an area of mostly empty space 1500 light years long named "The Lost Path", and within it was a dot named "Kolch" which was labeled as being 1275.85 light years from us. The tech-priest zoomed in on this area, and we discovered that this world was labeled as "unclassified" but had a few notes that described it as mostly primeval forests and ancient ruins, but with no intelligent life remaining. It was the third planet from its sun, earth sized, and with two small moons. Seven planets orbited this star, each of differing size. I noticed that the notation had been edited by an "A. M. Ogun Nemo".
"This world here, it is beyond the reach of the new Warp rift opening in this location, assuming my calculations were correct. As you see, it is approximately 1276 light years away from here, an estimated in-Warp travel time of about 24 to 36 hours if the Retribution functions as I believe it does. We can stop there, and I can further examine the ship in peace without the danger of a rift blowing open next door. From there, we contemplate our next move."
With a motion of his hand, he traced a holographic route that was basically a straight shot west before jumping out of Warp just beyond the system's outer planets before hooking around the orbit of Kolch. When I traced back to our starting point, I noticed the chilling detail that indicated that we were to jump into Warp as soon as we were out of the atmosphere here, and not at a safe distance from the planet. From what I remembered from the lore, transiting to and from the Warp that close to a celestial body was dangerous, but apparently, this was the best way for us. The tech-priest wanted to get the hell out of here as quickly as possible, safety of the planet be damned. At least it didn't look like there were many points of interest between Levant and Kolch. Quilan was to our east, but that Obsidian Reach daemon planet was a dangerous 63 light years to the south of our route at its closest, but it appeared to be absolutely bathed in a mess of red Warp danger. I hoped that the bad weather will keep whatever evil monsters dwelling in that eldritch hellscape away from us.
I then remembered that we would be traveling through the fucking Warp, the place where time and direction have little meaning. I might not even have the benefit of the Astronomicon to orient myself, if I was even able to sense it at all. Normal psykers didn't fly ships; Chaos possessed crazy people, daemons, and Navigators fly ships through the Warp, and I'm none of those things! I'm just some joker from New Jersey! This whole thing was incredibly intimidating, I thought, my mouth going dry. I started to protest, "Listen, everyone, I really don't know how to fly the ship, let alone guide it through the Warp," I said nervously. "This looks great, but really, I have no idea how to work any machine spirit or anything like that. I'm not a Navigator. I only have two eyes."
"Let me assist in that aspect. Once we are inside, I will attempt to commune with the machine spirits within the Retribution, and facilitate our movement."
"I have a concern, and correct me if I'm wrong," Alberich began. "It appears that the vessel remains buried underground. How would we escape?"
Null turned away from the map and looked at us both again with smiling pink eyes. "Leave that to me! I've had a very long time to prepare for such an occasion. I will say that I am greatly looking forward to it! I have some fireworks planned for our departure!"
"So, what's the plan then?" I asked as the star map retracted again, displaying the sparkling hologram of the Milky Way. A window with our route from Levant to Kolch remained shining above us.
"The plan is this. We need to leave as soon as possible. The network is stabilized for now, but if any sort of random failure occurs again, it may fail for good. I will need to take care of a few essential preparations first, but after that, we can meet in the Retribution's cavern. I will then lower the network's strength until we see the Key respond, and cause an entryway to appear. Once we find our way inside, I will determine the lowest setting on the pylon network that will allow a launch. We should pray that it isn't under 30%. We launch, and we run into the Warp as quickly as we can, just out of atmosphere. I calculate with 75% certainty that the ship has enough residual stored fuel to make the trip, so we have good odds. The pylon network will die after I am not able to reinforce it at the end of the week, causing the rift to appear behind us while en route. Looking on the bright side, we might get a little bit of an immaterial tail wind from it as we flee."
Null weakly laughed at the end of his explanation, but I could obviously tell that this worried him too. 75% probability that we had enough gas on a ship that hasn't flown since before the damn Horus Heresy to outrun a Warp rift blowing open was pretty terrifying. Also scary was that everyone was assuming that I could play the part of space eagle navigator to do all of this. When I thought about this, I felt that we were 100% screwed. I wished that I was still drunk.
"Remember what I said about fear, Erika," Null said, powering down the star map and turning toward me. "I have faith that the Omnissiah has guided me true. I have devoted so many years toward protecting this artifact, this treasure, and I believe that I have been called to defend it on its journey. I want to see it fly, and I have faith that I will." There was a solemn note in his voice as he placed one of his right arms briefly on my shoulder. It was strangely touching.
"So," Alberich chimed in. "When do we start?"
"Now," Null said, his eyes flashing bright gold with determination. "We start now."