\t"That antiproton beam cost us a bunch of carapaces."

\t"Hey, how was I to know that they were a decent shielding material for blacksuits?" He heaved a few of the more intact corpses of the creatures through the Rift, where the forensics team could have a look at their biology. "How was your survey?"

\t"They have a really good dimensional tracker among the tech on their bridge, but I think the influence of the Warp has rendered it inaccurate, so it needs massive recalibration. A lot of the shit is psi-active, and some came alive and tried to eat me. How about the drive systems?"

\t"Subdimensional conduits and manipulations. Very advanced, but with the Warp subsuming the vast majority of the planar layers, they probably dove right into it, and didn't make it out sane."

\t"Nothing tried to kill you there?" I asked in disbelief.

\t"That big thump was me ejecting the psychomatter core, and Marco shooting it down the throat with their Corona beamer."

\tI smirked. "Take a look at the pspectra on the hull." I flicked the results over to him.

\tHe read it and swore. "Damn, where did that find that much Neutron Molybdenum? You have to mine the stuff off white dwarf stars!"

\t"One guess."

\tHe turned to look at the system's star. "Crap. The albedo has strong moly-counts..."

\t"Did you inspect the anti-grav components? They have to have something rated for near-singularity levels..."

\t"Ohhhh..." he muttered, violet eyes no doubt lighting up.

\t"They have a long-range transpsychic communication that looks like something borrowed from the Elder Things. It's definitely an improvement over Beacons..."

\t"You put out something better than Beacons that can be Fleet-mounted and the Mekkers will go into convulsions just long enough to realize that killing you is the vaccine," he admonished me with a grin.

\t"So I bet that Sidereal Dimension-Twister Cannon mounted forward port that turns matter at right angles to itself should just be left there, too."

\t"Frak, no. Have you seen the power conduits and couplings for that? Things are totally insane works of beauty," he misdirected brightly.

\t"Yeah, I noticed the seventh-dimensional stabilizers and venting releases, too..."

\t"Whoever these things were, they were definitely Mythos-level. Pretty fluid meshing of psi and tech..."

\t"Saw that they probably had magic worked into the mix and pulled it too, aye?" I snorted.

\t"There's a whole wall of stuff that was slagged to unrecognizability. The carbon was squealing at me, and the silicon was trying to mate with it," he passed on, and I tried to picture it, then tried not to.

\t"Yeah, the viewing monitor array on the bridge had three monitors removed. With fusion fire." Okay, mine was much lamer than his.

\t"Ah, the perils of high-end mixed tech. In Soviet Grimdark, advanced tech uses you!"

\t"It does indeed. Think there'll be any problems with the things in the hull?"

\t"I think a Solar Furnace with a vivic chaser will give those sixth-state existences a nice taste of four-dimensional reality, and the Land can have munchies while I get a whole bunch of heavy Neutron metal for superstructures..." he /beamed happily.

\t"You seeing the kids and cronies going apeshit over what we potentially have here?" I half-laughed, turning my attention back to the floating horde of silent ghost ships.

\t"Yeah, but you need Tens just for the workforce here, with maxed-out Nulls and Sources. This is not a nice place." He clumped up beside me, sharing the view.

\tWe both braced as a horror wave blew past on screams and wails. We already had the anchor point planted, and watched as the Silk Road's engines fired up to take it out of here, heading for a rendezvous with a carrier that could do the maintenance and purges on it. We waved off Marco and Carmen as they turned on the Harmonic Drive, blew out of the mass shadow and into Jamming space, and got the duck out of Fodge before their ship decided to come apart, and then maybe come back together with some new B\u0026R components.

\t"Getting a couple solar furnaces to melt this stuff all down shouldn't be that hard. They'll also give some of the kids a high-Level playground."

\tHe inspected some slight gouges in his armor. "That was rather fun," he agreed. "The base battlefields are where the younger generation should grow."

\tEven with Ranthas showing the way, only ten percent of the Marked ever exceeded Six. Still, if they did, they went Right for Ten for Atlantean Human, max Forsaken or Psi potential, then started going Deep into whatever skilled trades needed Tens for support.

\tTen percent didn't seem like a lot, but when our Marked numbered in the tens of millions now, with a huge percentage combat-capable and experienced, well, that was very significant. Pretty much all the most renowned combat troops in the Riftward Sector were associated with Janus... and that included the various Thunder Legions by now.

\t"We're going to have to go almost psi-free here whatsoever, or something will notice, and shit will stumble onto us," he judged.

\t"Yeah. And we're gonna have to have the best motile salvaging force in space working this place. Tens just to feed ghost ships to a fusion sifter..."

\t"A Sargasso should be so honored."

\t"True dat."

\t"So, the Emperor. You figure out an Endgame for him?"

\t"No, but Grandmother did. The problem is the hyperconservative egotistical bastard isn't gonna wanna go for it. Eternal Exemplar Piss-ionic Liches are funny that way."

\t"Wonderful. He probably doesn't realize he's just a tool for the real fight, and thinks he's the one fighting."

\t"He is fighting. Has been fighting. He just hasn't been willing to end the fight on anyone else's terms but his. He wants to win, the poor bastard. Perfect Human, and perfectly stupid at times."

\t"Speaking as an ExLite, I can see where he might be a little egotistical."

\t"Hey, you promised me the galaxy. No backsies!"

\t"Posh. You're just gonna leave it to the kids the next day."

\t"Still no backsies!"

\t"Fine, fine." He pulled me to his armor, and I clunked my head against it as we stared at a very big fleet waiting to be recycled, and a whole lot of tech and psitech waiting to be unearthed by the smartest batch of sons and daughters in the galaxy.

\tBoo-yea!

----------------

\tTime passes...

\tIt was without a doubt a suicide attack.

\tThe Mekker Fleet had come out of Helljumps on three sides of Janusspace, and was barreling for Janus III at full speed, bound and determined to eliminate the threat at the heart of the new Duke Corunsun's holdings from existence.

\tBriggs had been harrying the rebelling Mekker forces unmercifully. The Mekkers were also plagued by defection after defection from weak-minded fools responding to the rising Cult of the God of the Machine that was spreading like a virus through all the planets of the Khagan Sector, seducing man and cyborg alike with its words, a road to greatness that anyone could take if they wanted to.

\tOnly those who could fight down the spark of humanity remaining within them could see the Cult and the Duke happy to allow it to exist as the demons corrupting the people of the Empire. The Mechanists rode forth determined to expose the many cancers that all seemed to originate from this world and its blasphemous Nymphals and heretical Ancients, and all those who chose to back them.

\tThe System Fleet sallied forth to deal with one incoming arm, and the Imperial Fleet laying over for repairs and resupply and the frankly more stable atmosphere of the Corunsun Realm raced forth to do the same. The void lit up with cross-accusations of heresy, blasphemy, treason, rebellion, and soon lit up with things far more violent than the vitriol in those words.

\tJanus III was an Imperial World, with all the defenses to be expected of such a place. Its cities had long repaired their shields, and even the most intensive of orbital bombings were going to take a considerable amount of time to get through them.

\tIt was time the third invading Fleet did not have. While it could exchange fairly evenly with the Imperial Fleet, as their technology was practically identical, the System Fleet of Janusspace had the GAMT technology that unsettled them so much, with displays of Angeltech and levels of weaponry and shields that were only supposed to exist on the most prized and elite of the Empire's ships. Those vessels rarely, if ever, went to the Outer Worlds, and instead prowled the Subsectors around far Tellus itself, ready to spring surprises on foes who managed to pierce through the many layers of systems before the homeworld.

\tThere were only two such TL 15 Vessels extant in the entire Sector. One was the personal vessel of the Archimandrite Congauss, the Expedition-class vessel Caliper, and the other was the dreadnought Genghis, the flagship of the Grand Admiral of the Khagan Sector Fleet, stationed at Rimcrown itself.

\tCaliper was leading this assault, sweeping in on the orbital defenses of Janus III almost unchecked.

\tThe Threshold Stations let go with everything, rather shocking the Mekkers with just how freely they spent their ammunition... and how terrifyingly accurate it was at range. The long guns of the stations lit up as the Mekkers closed in on the planet from all directions, joining the unending stream of missiles and rockets being sent out from launchers that would soon be fused solid from overuse.

\tBut Admiral Ontiff faced these arch-traitors to humanity with the grim resignation of his duty... and his knowledge that he would be back, back soon to bedevil them again. He had been promised it would be so, and so would the most loyal and best of his crew.

\tTheir defense was inspired, magnificent, and used the tried and proven technology of the Empire with several improvements that totally messed up the calculations of the incoming Mekkers. They held nothing back, with no thought of tomorrow or conserving power or the stations themselves.

\tThe enraged Mekkers nevertheless managed to reduce the four Threshold stations after hours of assault, overloading their shields and tearing the stations apart. Threshold Two through Five died in fire and glory, having brought down dozens of the attacking vessels as they did.

\tThreshold Station itself lasted a whole hour longer than all its other stations, as the combined firepower of the entire fleet was turned upon it. Even so, another six ships died before its power converters fused solid, and Admiral Ontiff overloaded the power core and sent the blast out through the shield array, ripping the Mekker dreadnought Crucible to shreds as overloaded harmonics fed back into the ship and the shockwave's vibrations tore it asunder.