My Fanfic Stash and Favorite online quests

Anyone that likes supreme commander and 40k?

Words: 28k+

Link: https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/18289

chp1

Disclaimer: I own jackshit.

AN: Ok, so, initially, I was rather put off 40k after GW's latest screaming leap into stupidity, but I've decided to give it another go after picking through some of the 40k books I've been reading, and re-reading for a while now. This was the result of that, with this technically being a redo of my original Commander story, but shifted a bit.

Bit of a head's up, but this first chapter may be a bit of an info-dump. I'm trying to keep things more concise than I did with Twisted Flesh and Metal, but feedback is always welcome.

Hope you enjoy!

You know that traditional Chinese curse? 'May you live in interesting times,' yeah?

Well, I considered as I surveyed the world around me from my newly acquired height, It seemed like someone really wanted to make my life a lot more interesting. All around me, the world was a grey-scale of serrated cliffs of obsidian and slate, great deserts composed of Iron dunes, and frozen oceans of Liquid Oxygen. 'Inhospitable,' was one word to describe the hell-scape that I gazed upon, with temperatures and surface pressures great enough to near-instantly kill a normal Human, if the presence of Liquid Oxygen wasn't a big enough clue of that. The atmosphere itself was toxic by most Human standards, filled with Fluorine and Chlorine compounds, with traces of radioactive Astatine being carried on the high-speed winds that roared through canyons and across cliffs.

Volcanic eruptions seemed to be as semi-regular as a decent postman, but I didn't know if that was because this area was especially unstable, or if the entire planet was this unstable as a rule. High viscosity and Silica contents ensured that each eruption was explosive, often with several sub-eruptions as lava flew into the air before being cooled down by the ambient temperature of the planet, the pressure making heat transfer surprisingly efficient. As a result, the weather cycle of the planet seemed to be entirely composed to rains of semi-molten rocks, smouldering mist banks of burning ashes, and the occasional rain of Hydrofluoric acid.

All in all, not a very nice place to live, and very hostile to normal Human life.

Which, raised the question: How the hell was I still alive?

Answer: Because I was no longer flesh-and-blood Human. Instead, my flesh and blood and been replaced with masses of ultra-advanced circuits, beyond-state-of-the-art weapons and thick layers of armour plating, all packed into a vaguely bipedal form that stood at around forty-three metres tall. And with it, came information that had been imprinted directly into whatever passed for my brain as vast databases were linked to it, giving me access to ungodly amounts of data.

For a time, understanding, horror, awe and shock had mingled together as I tried to understand the data that had been flashing through my mind, trying to understand what had happened to me. Mental acceleration was an amazing thing, letting me go through an entire grief cycle before regaining my sense of mental and emotional equilibrium in the same amount of time that it might have taken someone to make a fresh cup of coffee. Did that mean I liked the fact that I'd been dropped on some random world god-knows how far from home, assuming that I was even in the same galaxy, or even in the same universe? Hell to the fuck no, but it was my new reality, and there was very little I could do to change that at the moment.

Maybe in the future, but that was the future, and I had little in the way of long term plans beyond ensuring my own survival long enough to even need long-term plans. For the moment, my only goals were to ensure my own survival, and to maybe figure out just where the hell I was. Tasks made infinitely easier by the new nature that I'd had forced upon me, even if it had some upsides, especially with how little information I had.

Then again, a lot of things became easier when one was a Cybran Armoured Command Unit.

Well, that's about as clear as mud, and just as helpful. Was my first thought as I looked at the information before me some measure with sardonic amusement at the contents of said information. The thing that really made it funny was just how much I'd invested in getting this information in the first place, only to get a load of shite that I didn't even know what to make heads or tails of. Was it faulty measuring equipment, or were the measurements really that strange? Something to consider, especially with the amount of resources I'd thrown at finding out, though.

Still, looking at the galactic map that floated before me, spinning within my mind's eye, I had to wonder just what the hell I was looking at. Even before the Infinite War had kicked off, the Earth Empire had been a star-faring polity for over seven hundred years, and were no strangers to interstellar navigation. The techniques behind Pulsar-based navigation had been around for even longer than that, and had long since by the Earth Empire, never mind the factions of the Infinite War. As such, what I should have been looking at was an extremely accurate map of the galaxy that should have been able to pin-point my exact location, give or take half a kilometre.

Instead, I found myself looking at an utter, fucking mess.

What star maps I had barely resembled the soup of stars I'd just acquired, with everything from singular stellar bodies, to entire star clusters having been shifted seemingly at random, with entire constellations scattered into several pieces across dozens of light-years. Stars had disappeared, Pulsars had been shifted and the entire stellar landscape had been redrawn to such a degree that I couldn't even get an accurate idea of the current date, having been jumbled far beyond the capabilities of mere stellar drift. The only reason I was even sure I was in the Milky Way galaxy was due to the guiding light of distant galaxies, but even that was suspect, with my stellar graphs being next to worthless and making all my navigational data next to useless.

Storing the new star maps away for the time being, I considered my options with this new information in mind, planning my next course of action. Theoretically, I could spend the rest of eternity locked away on this one world, never stepping into the wider galaxy, safe and unknown. However, doing so was a double-edged sword, since it would leave me isolated and unaware of what could be out there, of the threats that might exist, until it was too late and they came crashing down on top of me. Never mind the fact that, if I really proved to be more trouble than I was worth, what was to stop a potential enemy from just deploying some manner of planet-killing, or system-killing, weapons to deal with me? Off the top of my head, I could think of several settings with that level of firepower and technological advancement, and the idea of having one of those weapons come screaming down through the atmosphere, directly above me was something I'd rather avoid.

Exploration, on the other hand, got me off this rock to one degree or another, depending on how I went about it. Technically speaking, I didn't even need to leave this volcanic hell-pit of a planet thanks to my nature as a weaponised Von Neumann construct. I could just build Von Neumann probes and send them flying, probing and multiplying in every direction. However, this also ran into the problem of what I might encounter, and how it would react to being probed. I could send out probes, only for them to stumble into the territory of some vast stellar empire, one that didn't enjoy their territory being violated and would seek me out to enact bloody vengeance for it. And that was without mentioning anything else that could be encountered along the way, never mind surviving said encounters.

Best of bad options, I suppose. I concluded, my heat exchange systems speeding up for a moment before returning to normal operations, the closest I'd managed to come to a sigh since I'd awoken in my new body. Out of the two options, exploration at least meant I'd have options in the event the absolute worst-case scenario took place. It meant I'd have ships, fleets, and armies to act as support, things I could use to either defend myself from hostile stellar empires, or cover my escape, if it came down to it. Something I was hoping to avoid, but it was better to hope for the best, but plan for the worst, in my opinion, especially with so many unknowns to deal with.

However, before I even considered building ships, I'd need to actually design them first. An idle thought had already sent data-queries skittering through my databases, digging up any relevant information on any voidships used in the SupCom-verse. What results that had already been found had been… Underwhelming, to say the least, but for understandable reasons, primarily related to the method of interstellar travel used by the factions present in the SupCom-verse.

All of which came down to one simple thing: Energy costs.

Quantum Gate Travel allowed interstellar travel to become a reality, but it imposed harsh limitations to make that happen with the energy cost increasing exponentially as you increased the amount of mass being moved, the distance being travelled, or both. Moving colony ships during the initial waves of expansion was one thing, being built to be as light and barebones as possible, but moving warships was an entirely different kettle of fish, with their thick layers of armour and heavy weapon loadouts. Moving one warship between systems was a massive expenditure of energy, never mind entire fleets and their compliments, and often required the use of orbital Quantum Gates to allow such a transfer to be done in a timely, practical manner.

It didn't take long for the weakest link in void-based warship doctrines to be spotted and exploited from there, with multiple orbital Quantum Gates being either sabotaged, or destroyed outright, within the first decades of the Infinite War. ACU doctrines were the final nail for any kind of void-based combat, as they promised to be a cheaper, more practical solution that allowed for dynamic alterations in force composition on the fly, without the requirement of a receiving Gate to function. Not to mention, most higher-tier air units, along with air-based experimentals, could easily function as space-based forces if needed. By the time of the Seraphim War, the only true starships that existed could be classed as various kinds of Transports or Freighters, designed to move large amounts of cargo in a single run, such as Refugees, trying to escape the genocide being conducted by the Seraphim and their Order followers.

As a result, most of the warship designs I had in my databases were horribly outdated relics that hadn't been updated with more modern technologies in over nine hundred years and had been left to gather dust, unlike some other pieces of space-based infrastructure. One such example of more up-to-date orbital infrastructure being the Orbital Telescopes I'd used to map out the galaxy, having been updated more recently.

Still, at the very least, it gave me something to work with as a basis, along with all the data that had originally gone into designing them. The fact I also had copies of various theoretical, experimental and R&D databases didn't hurt either.

XXX

It took me five hours to find a geologically stable location to build a base, another two to actually reach it, and a further six to reach the point that I'd actually been able to try pinpointing my location via mapping out Pulsars. By the point I'd been willing and able to try my hand at astrography, the original base I'd constructed had grown to a massive size, built inside of a semi-hollowed out mountain just under thrice the size of Olympus Mons. From base to peak, it was slowly being converted into my base of operations on the Grey, the rather unimaginative and uninspiring name I'd chosen for the planet itself.

Vast catacombs had been built, hollow halls of excavated rock that stretched for kilometres and filled with ever-moving machines of all kinds. Reinforced supports arched up from the floor to the ceiling of every chamber, looking like an impossibly large ribcage, formed from ribs at least thirty metres across. Inside, row after row of structures moved to an unheard rhythm as they did as their directives instructed, producing more machines, storing materials, generating energy or harvesting fresh resources from the crust of the world below them. Already, dozens of separate chambers had been given over to storing the machines produced, all lined up and ready to be deployed at a moment's notice. Unneeded for the time being, and, perhaps, ever, but I'd rather have something and not need it, then find myself in the opposite situation and not being able to live to regret it.

However, for all the impressive feats of resource harvesting and mass production that were being undertaken under my feet, they were not the focus of my attention at the moment.

Standing in the caldera of my mountain base, I watched as Engineering Drones flew through the air in circular paths directed by their parent Engineers, Protocrafters blazing as they constructed something new, one atom at a time. With the surrounding grounds dominated by a carpet of T3 Engineers and [Hive] Engineering Stations, I watched as the new structure practically faded into existence in a fizzle of red light in seconds, feeling as systems came online and connected with the rest of my network. Systems came online in moments as handshake protocols were exchanged and encryptions were synced together, all seamlessly falling into place as it finished it's boot-up processes without difficulty.

Had I had lips, I would have grinned as my new, Cybran Orbital Launch Facility finished coming online, vastly increasing my trans-atmospheric capabilities as I sifted through the new connections that came with it. Even as I did so, the world around me was far from stationary, the carpet of T3 Engineers shifting as they went to craft a second one, of fifteen spread across the floor of the caldera. As they moved, [Hives] sprang up to assist with future construction efforts, following instruction-sets as they began upgrading themselves whenever they had the chance. However, I allowed that to sink into my peripheral awareness, my focus primarily fixed on the databases that now sprang to the foreground, filled with new designs I could now build with this structure online.

Admittedly, I'd already had access to all of it before, and had used it to construct a number of small satellites that I'd had carried into orbit by T3 [Whistler] Heavy Air Transports, something that had surprised me, at first, since I didn't think Cybrans even had a T3 Air Transport. Turns out, that had been a game gimmick. In truth, the amount of units that had apparently been available to every faction bordered on the stupidly obscene, since a thousand years of war had been more than enough time to create designs to fill just about any niche you could imagine. Want a variant of an existing Naval unit that can sail through lava? There's a design for that. Want an up-gunned version of a Mech Marine to blunt an assault of T2 units? There's a design for that. Want Factories that could be built underwater and produce amphibious versions of air and land units? There's a design for that!

Basically, if you could think of a possible environment or situation where a specific unit might be required, chances were good that someone had already created a design for it and added it to the database. And if not, there were tools that allowed for extremely rapid design and prototyping of new units out in the field. And, of course, that was without including things like the actual experimental and pie-in-the-sky designs, not the massive T4 assault units, though, those had dozens of variants and additional designs than compared to the games I'd known.

All of which just gave me more tools to add to my ever-growing toolbox that I could call on further down the line. However, for the time being, I'd need to focus on my immediate needs. As a result, I quickly found what I was looking for as I selected one of the construction options available to the Orbital Launch Facility, creating a build queue that quickly included several other designs as the new structure burst into life. As it did so, unoccupied [Hives] sprang to life, fully upgraded as Engineering Drones flew through the air to circle around the phantom image of what was being built as in-built Protocrafters came online in turn. It was a process that was quickly repeated as I queued up a similar build order with the other Orbital Launch Facilities still to be built.

With so much build power all concentrated in a single location, it took less than thirty seconds for the work to be complete. I watched as Protocrafters retreated back into the surface of the hexagonal plate that formed the Orbital Launch Facility, Engineering Drones circling for a moment before dispersing, returning to their parent [Hives] or moving to assist in other constructions. Where once there had been nothing, the massive form of a SSTO-rocket stood on top of the Orbital Launch Facility, it's dark metal hull glinting in the dull light of Grey's distant blue star.

Once more, a link formed as handshake protocols were exchanged, the newest addition to the network coming online as I watched encoded instructions come to the foreground. Systems were checked and diagnostics were run, as per normal, ensuring fuel and energy lines functioned, that all components were in full working order. Expert systems smart enough to be described as 'dumb' AIs watched on, scrutinising each diagnostic report with an inhuman attention to detail, letting nothing escape notice until it was satisfied with the results. The moment that happened, I watched as systems came online in a heartbeat, fuel lines opening as pumps activated, pushing hyper-compressed reactants and oxidisers to a singular ignition chamber.

The result was explosive, generating heat and pressure in massive amounts, all focused in a single direction. Stabiliser arms held the rocket steady for a moment, holding it down as the reaction quickly picked up, hitting its stride as more thrust was generated, before they let go. Without an anchor to hold it down, artificially reduced gravity fought to keep the rocket grounded, but was overcome as the construct thundered upwards into the hissing sky above, passing through the overlapping shields that covered the caldera in short order. Through the copious amounts of Omni-Radar installations, I watched as it climbed higher and higher through the ever-thinning atmosphere as data-entries played out across my mind, showing the entirety of the rocket's path and the metamorphosis that it would soon undergo once in orbit.

Already, even as it climbed through atmospheric layers, I could feel it changing, internal Protocrafter warming up as they rearranged atoms and molecules for the next stage of the rockets existence, as per its own internal directives. Once in a stable orbit over the planet, it would reclaim the rocket-motors and protective coverings of the payload before expanding itself, constructing sensor-pod assemblies of various kinds, back-up solar-collection cells, communication arrays and massive data-processing engines. All of this would be done over the course of another three minutes, all so that it could carry out its function as an orbital observatory and mapping array, one many times larger than all the previous satellites I'd put in orbit combined.

It would be the first of its kind of be built here, but it would not be the last. Already, another was being constructed on the platform it had just been launched from, with another was almost finished on a second platform, and the beginnings of a third were being made on a just-finished Facility. The beginnings of a vast orbital grid of satellites and platforms was taking form as I watched, with new additions being built as quickly as they were being launched, some of modern construction, while others were far older, added as a stop-gap measure until the process to create a modernised variant of them was completed. Gigantic data-engines were already humming along, doing just that as they ran countless simulations and calculations every microsecond to complete the tasks I'd given them.

With the progress I'd made, it should have been a cause for celebration, even given the construction capabilities I had at my finger tips. However, I couldn't help but feel some degree of apprehension, of anticipation, as I looked to the sky and the stars beyond. I felt like things were going too well, perhaps as a result of old paranoia or instincts I'd assimilated from data-reports, manuals and ACU training simulations, but I couldn't help the feeling that the other shoe was going to drop. I didn't know when, I didn't know what would happen when it did, or even why it would happen, but I had a very bad feeling about what would happen when it did.

Within twenty-six hours of my arrival on Grey, the space around the planet had grown crowded with artificial constructs of a dozen shapes and sizes. Everything from tiny planetary surveyors, all the way up to massive modernised weapons platforms that had originally been dredged up from ancient databases. Chains of linked platforms flowed along orbital paths, locked in geostationary orbits as void-based units fluttered between them, transferring units and cargo back and forth as they went.

Monolithic server farms floated freely within the gravitational equilibrium of Grey's L1 Lagrange point, clustered together and continuously growing larger still, no longer limited by the tyranny of gravity to limit their size. Vast streams of data fed into each one of these colossi, allowing them to run calculations and simulations around the clock as they output their results into one another, providing fodder for complex evolutionary algorithms in the pursuit of specific results. Improved Quantum Travel efficiency, better power generation, and enhanced Quantum communication capabilities were just three of a number of lines of research these research nodes sought, each with dozens of sub-objectives to be completed in turn. With an operational history that only measured hours back, the research nodes hadn't existed for long, however, what results they'd already produced had already proven them to be well worth the investment in resources needed to make them.

The vast majority of those results could be seen at Grey's L2 Lagrange point, where a colossal scaffold of metal beams hung in the void, creating the shape of a wireframe of hexagonal honeycombs. Dozens of platforms and satellites hung around the structure, looking almost microscopic in comparison to the vast array of metal they surrounded. Void-based Engineers, heavily reminding me of the Rasputin's Octahedron from Destiny, floated through the vacuum in vast swarms, launching Engineering Drones and adding to those already circling the centre of one of the honeycomb cells, and the object located there. Said object wasn't the largest in the system, not by a long shot, but it was the largest designed to move under its own power that I was currently producing.

And even with the collective output of over three hundred Void Engineers as big as a Monkeylord, and the multiple Megalith-sized Protocrafters built into the surrounding scaffold, it was still incomplete after over an hour of non-stop construction. Then again, given the sheer scale of the object being constructed, and the method being used, such a length of time was rather understandable. Protocrafters assembled things atom by atom, and trying to do that for an object that measured six-hundred-and-fifty metres along its largest dimension wasn't going to be quick, regardless of just how efficient or advanced the SupCom-verse had gotten with such technologies.

Still, it was something I was rather proud of.

Six-hundred-and-fifty metres long, one-hundred-and-twenty metres wide and eighty metres tall, the entire thing looked like a jagged, hexagonal needle that grew wider towards the rear in sharp jumps that segmented the hull into bands. Given that I knew nothing about what was out there at the moment, I'd designed this thing with the latest and greatest tech that I had access to, all the way up to the bleeding edge designs being produced by my research nodes, after some testing, of course. Thick armour covered a reinforced super-structure, further enhanced by an over-engineered Structural Integrity Field system and multiple, redundant Shield systems, all designed to protect the vital Quantum Core that was FTL Drive, central processor, power source and communications array all in one. Dozens of weapons had been integrated into the design, ensuring that it could defend itself if required, a last resort if the built-in stealth systems proved incapable of hiding the ship if it ran into someone hostile.

For all of that, it really wasn't surprising just how long it was taking to build, since the Quantum Core alone had probably added an hour on to the build time, or weeks, if I wasn't throwing so many Engineers at it. Sure, it gave this Drone-ship the ability to self-teleport and function as an oversized, void-based ACU in its own right, but Quantum Cores were expensive, and the new versions that my research nodes had come up with weren't any cheaper. The opposite in fact, as their initial designs had squeezed out greater energy efficiency per unit of mass per unit of distance at a vastly increased cost of difficult-to-produce elements, as well as taking longer to produce via Protocrafter. The same applied to a lot of other systems incorporated into this singular ship, all better at the cost of taking more time and Mass to build.

Not an economically practical thing to do, but I could currently get away with it thanks to the fact I had resources to burn, with my only real limit being how quickly I could spend it. Still, hopefully I'd be able to figure out some method of speeding up the build times required, assuming I needed to mass produce these kinds of void units in the future.

Turns out, it took two hours and six minutes for the first of my 'true' void units to be finished, with four more reaching completion in the other four shipyard-cells at the same time. With five voidships online, the first thing I'd done with them was to put them through their paces, starting with multiple systems diagnostics, before moving up from there. Testing of their sensor systems had them scan distant objects in the solar system and beyond, seeing how they compared to the sensor maps I'd already compiled. Weapons systems were tested against escalating levels of armoured targets and random asteroids, to varying degrees and power levels. Shields, armour, the Structural Integrity Fields and self-repair systems were tested by firing at them with a number of weapons platforms. Testing the stealth systems had them run silent through space as I tried to detect them with the sensors of satellites and other platforms. Engines were tested to their limits as the ships raced around the orbit of Grey, and even some of the other parts of the system, from the dead rocks of the inner two worlds, to the Gas Giants beyond Grey and their respective asteroid belts.

Finally, came the FTL tests.

The entire charging process for the jump had been, somewhat, nerve-wracking. Nothing of this size or scale had ever been designed to be capable of self-teleportation via Quantum Travel in the history of the entire Infinite War. As the charge accumulated in massive capacitors, my nervous anticipation continued to mount, right up until the ships jumped…

… Only to be replaced by relief as sensors reported the ships had arrived at their destination positions without trouble, with an average drift of plus-or-minus two hundred metres. For an ACU, that would have been an utterly lethal amount of drift, and might still prove lethal to a voidship, but it was something I was willing to accept for first iteration near-prototypes. Several more test jumps were carried out, taking them from the outer reaches of the system all the way to orbit around the blue star at the system's core and every stellar object in between. Software updates allowed for smoother transitions as volumes of data were transmitted back, the link never wavering as they jumped from place to place.

Still, for all that things seemed to be working perfectly, there was still one big worry remaining: Staying in contact.

Space was a big place, and for all the amazing benefits of Q-comms, they could still be slowed, disrupted, or outright jammed. Given any one of these situations, any expedition of void units that I send out into the unknown could get lost and cut off, leaving them to rely on internal 'dumb' AIs, which were more reactive, than proactive, and tended to default to just charging the enemy and firing as they came into range. Not the worst tactic, especially if you gave no shits about casualties and could rapidly replace said casualties, but delays between order and action due to distance could easily lead to defeat, and death. Thankfully, there were potential solutions for this problem.

The first option was a logical step to improve the communication technologies I had available to me, one that was currently ongoing, as the galaxy was a big place and staying in contact was important. Some of the tech I'd already stuffed into my new ships was an incremental improvement over the stuff I'd arrived here with, so why stop there?

The second option was to increase the use of Q-comm relay stations to act as repeaters between distant expeditions and me. This had the advantage of also increasing the amount of dedicated hardware to push up the soft limit present on how many units I could control and link every fragment of the Quantum Economy altogether. However, on the flipside, it introduced a new weak-point that could see distant task forces cut off from both command links and supply lines, so to speak, if the relays were destroyed. Something to consider further down the line, once I knew more about this new galaxy, me thinks.

The third option was to outright uproot myself and explore this new galaxy myself, not even bothering with scouts beyond a certain distance, side-stepping the issue entirely. This idea, I immediately discarded as being stupid and suicidal, since I had no idea what was out there, what it might be capable of, and I had a preference for not living only long enough to regret it.

The forth option was to Fork myself, splitting into multiple copies of myself and having each of them directing a different expeditionary group. That, I discarded for the moment, as long separation of Forks could cause them to diverge in different, and, perhaps, horrific ways. Not to mention, but if one of them encountered something and lost, then other Forks might be stomped just as easily due to thinking the same way. Admittedly, QAI had managed to pull it off to some extent, but that apparently had more to do with the Seraphim tech he had been 'gifted' at some point, rather than any native advancement, to deal with dual issues of bandwidth and interference. Still, it would probably have to wait until I had better communication technology available, since I doubted I'd suddenly stumble across a cache of Seraphim tech here.

Finally, the fifth option was to create a colony and use the inhabitants as my… Supporters? Subordinates? Minions? One of those, and using them as a source of manpower that could be charged with different duties as required. Thanks to the Seraphim War, virtually every ACU had a refurbished Colonisation Package that had been based on the same one used by the old Earth Empire, with the intent being that, if the Seraphim won, then Humanity could rise again so long as even a single ACU escaped the purge. And thanks to the Cybrans being sneaky bastards, they'd also managed to grab a copy of the UEF version, along with a UEF ACU database, along with some low-level Aeon textbooks and scraps of Seraphim lore. How they managed to get some of the latter stuff, including the UEF ACU database, I had not a fucking clue, never mind how I had it, but I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Still, out of all of them, the fifth option seemed like the best option I had at the moment to get around the communication bottleneck. However, I didn't plan to found a colony right this second, I had too little information say one way or another how to set it up to confront the challenges out there.

At the very least, knowing where I was wouldn't go amiss.

It was time.

Thirty hours after I'd arrived on Grey, I felt ready to start exploring the wider galaxy. The newly named [Seeker] Void Scouts had passed all the testing I, or my research nodes, could come up with and had passed with flying colours. Internal Protocrafters had allowed them to upgrade themselves to the newest standards as tech was improved at a rapid pace, causing the twelve [Seekers] now hovering in orbit around Grey to be slightly more advanced when compared to the original designs I'd cooked up.

Consulting my star maps and the target coordinates one last time, I ran another diagnostic as I checked and re-checked everything. Every system came back green, all FTL target coordinates matching what I'd designated and everything lined up exactly as I'd commanded. Everything was ready and just waiting for me to give the signal, but whenever I went to do so, I couldn't help but feel a sensation of dreadful anticipation, feeling like something was about to go wrong as soon as I did so. It was the same feeling that had haunted me since I'd gotten into the void, the same feeling that had only grown as I reached for this point, ready to head into the wider galaxy. Heat exchange systems cycling up and back down, I forced that feeling down. Come good or ill, what happened next needed to happen.

Jump. In a moment, the command was given, and all twelve [Seekers] disappeared in a flash of light. Sensors recorded their passage through the Quantum Realm, like lightning bolts racing to the ground, as communication links fed a constant stream of updates back to me. A moment passed and then they reappeared, systems recalibrating in an instant as sensors logs were updated with new information and star maps were consulted Mapping arrays were deployed as internal systems checked and double-checked. Coordinates were compared and the positions of stars were measured, pin-pointing the location of each [Seeker] and comparing it to where it had previously been. Results came back in nanoseconds, passed back through the link to me at the same time, final confirmation that everything had worked at the [Seekers] had arrived without problem.

The knowledge that nothing had gone wrong, yet, was a source of relief, one that made it easier to press forwards as orders were sent. Sensor pods unfolded and expanded outwards, locking into place as they prepared to carry out what they'd been designed to do as each [Seeker] floated through the Interstellar void above their target systems, roughly twelve light hours into the black. Systems were tested once more as diagnostic subroutines checked every power linkage, every connection port and every line of management code. All done in a handful of nanoseconds as they each focused on their target systems, streaming data back to me as I watched with some interest as to what kind of galaxy I might be stepping into as I shuffled through report after report.

Five systems were empty, filled with a dozen worlds on average of one stripe or another circling around a single, but completely devoid of any signs of an Industrial-level civilization, or anything more advanced than that. Three more were more interested, filled with a dozen asteroid belts held around a binary system of stars, with the few surviving planets pot-marked by repeated asteroid impacts, their surface temperatures leaving them molten from close proximity to the two stars that held them captive. Another system held a solitary Blue Hypergiant, the space around it warm and filled with radiation. The next was a novelty in its own right, a triad of mismatched stars dancing around the centre of the system as planets were forced to violently shift and jolt around as the stars did so. Prediction algorithms showed that some were even forced between the stars from time to time, reduced to masses of boiling plasma before cooling back down, only held together by their own gravitational field. By comparison, the next wasn't as interesting, but it still held a mix of asteroid belts and worlds, the star at its core giving off energetic readings as lances of solar mass violently erupted form the surface of the yellow star.

However, the last system…

Looking at the results, a part of me still struggled to believe what I was looking at, initially believing that it was some kind of fault with the sensor systems. Multiple diagnostics and system reboots continued to show the same data, and even jumping in another [Seeker] didn't produce different results as I felt the other shoe drop at last, manifesting in horror and dread at the sight I was seeing through the distant sensors of the [Seekers].

The last system was a graveyard, cluttered with asteroids and the remains of hundreds of void ships that ran the range from fifteen metre long void-superiority fighters, all the way up to massive behemoths, the largest of which being over ten kilometres from bow to stern. Examples of multiple different design philosophies were immediately apparent among the wrecks as sensors peered through the clutter of multi-kilometre long scrap-satellites. Images resolved, revealing the state of the world trapped within the ring of broken iron, showing the scars of battle and orbital fire. The ruins of a civilization were equally apparent, reaching up from glassed soils like the thin, knobby fingers with far too many joints.

And yet, throughout the graveyard of the ancient dead, there were signs of life, built from fragments of scrap iron and half-ruined wrecks. Asteroid-settlements had been built, multiple void rocks chained together by enormous cables as metal structure grew across them like a metallic cancer. Ships flew through the void, made from scrap and broken parts, but working, flying and fighting through the void as sensors picked up detonations, energy discharges and images of collisions as parodies of monstrous faces rammed into one another. All the while, signals roared across every frequency they could reach, drowning out everything else around them and blotting out any signal that might have been beyond them. It was a signal that carried a battle cry, a rallying call and a declaration all in one, sent howling out of tens of millions of throats all at once.

"WAAAAaaaggh!"

It was also the final nail in the coffin as my ability to deny the reality before me was overcome by recognition of what I was looking at. Sensor reports focused with a thought, scanning over images of a double-headed eagle across a dozen hulls, just as they scanned over crude images of a horned skull repeated a dozen times on just as many scrap-iron hulls. What I was looking at defied reality, but it was, it was my reality and I couldn't change that as a single thought ran through my mind as it processed what was in front of it.

Well, fuck.

AN: Well, here goes another shot at this, finger's crossed that it works out! Hope you enjoyed the first chapter of this and, as always, feel free to give suggestions, feedback and comments as the story progresses.

Cheers!