Chapter 507 - Far Future Ch. 217 – Following a Dark Trail (1/2)

Bering Briggs was one of the Natural Explorers. He was silly eager to get to Ten, get himself an Alias-class Explorer, and go jetting out into the void, see all the wonders and horrors out there, and arrange for big enough hammers to hit them in the face.

Dora Briggs was a Natural Cartographer, willing and able to map the entire universe, given enough time. Bering wanted to go new places, and she wanted to map them and lead others behind.

The Empire being as big as it was meant that 'new places' was anywhere one of my kids or I had never been. The Phlos all had to be tracked and recorded, the links between the various stars put in place, and all the many, many connections set up in the Map for people to use as they needed.

For now, what they were doing is following aetheric signals from world to world where we hadn't been, making landfall, and Riftcutting a passage so spatial coordinates could be locked in, and Ranthas could come in to start doing things that would definitely involve a lot of people dying.

Infiltration teams hit the relay points like ghosts in the night, got what they needed to get, while Bering and Dora mapped out whatever system and its Phlos they were in, before following the trail off into the stars, moving from system to system along an ever-growing map, making their way to whatever the destination point was.

Sometimes there was a Rantha already there, but of a dozen worlds, it only happened twice, as there were far too many worlds in the Empire. In such cases, they still followed the Phlos, charting new routes and rivers through the deep void, arriving in-system, only to be sent back out to the next destination.

The Tachyon Drive was up well over ten PPH now, so even a thousand light years wasn't too huge a trip anymore. Too, their sensors were TL 15 tech on the Celestial Tribute's fabbing standards, and there was plenty of information on movements of energies and very, very alien entities in the deep void to come by, usually concerning how to sense them early and stay away from them.

Coming in from outside the heliosphere also gave them exposure to the movements of the true alien races out there, particularly the Mi-Go and other Aberrant-worshipping races who dwelt at the far edges of space. Even if it was passive and in the far distance, it was more information than any other organization in Known Space possessed about such races. No race with good sense went out beyond the heliospheres without good reason, after all.

Tracking, charting, moving, mapping; going from system to system, and opening Rifts to get planetary locks to the base in Gloom so operatives could come in, and it could join the growing array of places they could get to on demand.

Expanding the Map, along with everyone else doing the same thing, in all directions from multiple locations across the entire galaxy.

But most weren't driving it towards the center of the Empire of Man and Sector Solus, heart of the lands held by humanity.

They had to be careful when coming into new systems, manufacturing false breaches to be picked up by the sensors of the Imperial forces as 'proof' they'd Helljumped their way in. It was easy enough to disguise their vessel as a courier, given its speed. Alluding to contracts and deliveries and suchlike was a decent way to get planetside, discretely pop a short-time Rift and get operatives on hand for infiltrating the local Beacon.

The trail moved on, from Crownworld to Throneworld, and then back out, yet still in, because now they were in Imperial space, and the full might of mankind could fall upon them if they made a mistake.

From the mighty bastion world of Scutum III, off to the mustering world of Gladius, where endless numbers of men came in to get elite training as Imperial Marines, and were turned around and shipped out in equal numbers for the endless wars, equipped with equipment from a dozen surrounding forgeworlds.

One of those forgeworlds was cold and proud Hurksen V, wrapped in ice and only populated in its heated heart. The trail went out into the cold void of lazy stars, and thence to cold and windswept Carag IV, an almost feral world with little of worth save for the extremely tough people who lived tribal lives there, with a single small kiloplex lording it over the whole world.

There was no reason for such a world to have a Beacon, because it was barely even a blip on the Empire's radar. No traders came here, and its products were basically the occasional avid hiker and survivalist, and people who didn't want to be anywhere the Empire would bother to look for them. The wilds of Carag were one of those places.

A ship coming in to visit this place would be noticed immediately, so the two had to come in under cloak, and make planetfall some distance from the kiloplex. The Ranthas who came out to do the infiltration promptly snickered at having to run nigh on five thousand kliks to get to their destination, but simply got to it immediately, Tats driving thrusters as they skimmed toward their destination.

The city authorities would doubtless have been quite alarmed by how readily they infiltrated the city and bypassed its defenses, but Vampire's Veil was largely proof against non-biotech... and they noted that this backward, isolated kiloplex with basically no discernible products or economy had remarkably good security tech... and a remarkably active Beacon processing astropathic notices for a place with little nothing important about it.

Curiouser and curiouser...

The purpose of the place was going to be fun to dig out, and the two Ranthas promptly made it their pet project to take over the whole damn world, and have fun doing it. Someone had made it less than memorable, so making it get even less distinctive shouldn't be out of the question.

The last leg of the trip wasn't following an astropathic signal. The messages were broadcast up to an orbiting satellite, which then precision-relayed them to a relay station on an asteroid in the next orbital path, which was regularly visited by a shuttle from a ship that appeared on the edge of the system, and just as quietly departed without ever going near the planet itself.

It had no clue that I had waved goodbye to Nora and Bering as I hitched a ride on the shuttle, jumped off outside the ship as the courier came gliding back inside to dock, and set myself up out on the ship's hull in a convenient spot, my Vajra standing between me and hard vacuum as this frigate sucked in its atmosphere and turned and made it out to a convenient blind spot behind an outer system gas giant before Helljumping away.

Did the idiots think that a courier method was more secret? They were basically pointing an arrow from the Warp right to wherever they were going. The crew of the ship below me couldn't possibly all be Voids, which meant they Warp could see them.

Still, they had to realize it was important... and jRaztl had to find it amusing enough to relay to his minions. I doubted that would happen. The last thing the Warp wanted to happen is for free Voids to start working in the galaxy again. The Void Brother habit of removing pivotal and important pieces instead of being distracted by the chaff and drek was really, really off-putting to the cult-forming fanatics trying to hide in the background. That stuff didn't really work with Voids.

Their other habit of getting humanity back on a proper track, instead this grimdark techno-hell the Empire had become, wouldn't make them any friends, either.