M_admch

It was, quite simply, the largest expeditionary force assembled since the Great Crusade. It had not one, but two massive capital ships, each of which might have led their own fleets.

The smaller of the two – and yet, roughly 20 kilometres in length and two kilometres abeam -  was the Explorator fleet’s flagship, an Ark Mechanicus named Infinite String. Its name wasn’t a reference to yarn or cord, but to endless processions of data – of which its first expedition promised many.

The larger of them, on the other hand, was a Gloriana-Class imperial warship, the Light of Terra, the bodyguard of the fleet flagship. By itself, this mighty machine was capable of razing sectors to the ground and carrying within it whole crusades, legion upon legion of soldiers, battalions of tanks and walker vehicles.

No proper expedition had yet returned a comprehensive report on the mysteries of the Ghoul Stars, a vast swath of countless ancient, near-dead systems which scattered across the galactic northeast. The Light was there to ensure that this one did. It might have been bigger and better armed, but the Infinite was still the superior choice as the flagship – it had the superior signalling capacity, sensors, and command and control facilities.

Scattered about these two behemoths like a school of fish hovering around a pair of whales were many more vessels. There were combat ships like the Cobra-class Destroyer Pre-Emptive Retaliation in tight arrowhead formations, while others, like the Bloodseeker, a Strike Cruiser from the Carcharodons Space Marine chapter, lurked on the edge of the perimeter like wary wolves. Transports like the Lapsed Pacifist and Litany of Litanies wallowed behind, bulging with bulk supplies, and even an Inquisitorial Black Ship, the Nevermore, was occasionally visible as a black shadow when it happened to get between an observer and one of the larger ships.

Yet even these ships, made diminutive by comparison to the capital ships, were somewhere from one to four kilometres in length.
Even tinier, like motes of illuminated dust, were inter-ship shuttles, tugs and patrolling wings of fighters, racing between and around the fleet, the spark of their drives like fireflies in the night, fleeing into the yawning holds and nestling themselves into docking hardpoints on the larger ships, preparing themselves for Warp transition.

Just the stationkeeping and collision management routines of the fleet would have occupied a whole department of servitors and overseeing magi, but every ship had been synchronised to the Infinite String’s command cogitators, and so kept their positions in the formation.

Observing each spark of light from the Infinite’s command deck, I knew that I could order the massive ship to make any course correction, a heading change of just a fraction of a degree or a spin on its axis like a ballerina, and every single one of those massive machines would make the same choreographed motion. The urge to do it on a whim was nearly overwhelming.

“Arch-Magos, all Expeditionary Fleet elements report ready to make warp transition with Geller fields at full strength.”
“Acknowledged. Stand by for transition on my command.”
I could have ordered the other tech priest to engage the drives with a quip...say, “Engage!” or “Make it so!”, but not this time. Connected to the ship’s datasphere, I was perfectly capable of pushing the damn button myself.
So I did.

Reality tore ahead of us, and we were catapulted headlong into the endless, screaming Warp.