After the report and extra resources allocated to the Obsidian Auguries, I went to visit Fabricator Gemma at her regular workplace, a server of the Speranza masked as a new cogitator core stolen from the Votann. That kinda explained away most irregular actions, but Gemma was a great tech-priest and already figured out most of the truth.
"I thought you trusted me, Lord Lancefire. You made me the highest ranking Fabricator in the entire Fringe!" she complained as I scrolled through her inventory, mostly to allow the Blade to gather all the data we might need.
"Exactly! Your religion is what makes you special, Lady Gemma. The same way as the Sisters of Battle are also special. You are both part of and leaders of the priest faction in my Domain, something that has been a part of humanity from its earliest days. In general, every human society contains these four factions: priests, merchants, administrators and soldiers." I said with a careful voice, guiding the discussion onto more safer avenues.
"But the Cult Mechanicus...merges them all into the Forge." Gemma realized with her high intellect.
"I'm not saying no. It's just not efficient. Tech-priests have poor diplomatic skills in general, and thus their trades and merchants are quite bad. Look at your production schedule: lots and lots of resources lacking, stalling production, mostly because you don't have an efficient supply network. Even now, 90% of your resources come from my Rogue Trader dynasty." I pointed out at the holographic list of stopped production lines.
"You have a solution, my Lord?" Gemma asked directly.
"Yes and no. The most efficient way would be to open the market, and allow anyone to trade freely, with the Imperium, the colonies or even xenos. The least efficient way would be to focus on autarky, and try to obtain everything we need locally. You can see the problems with both solutions." I said with a sad voice.
My Domain was suffering, not only from constant wars, but also from the lack of a true galactic market. Feudalism as a system was rather stable, and it could endure for thousands of years, even if stressed by a hundred factors. But it wasn't conductive to technological and economical advancement.
Internally, the Forge Worlds functioned as command economies, which were also proven to be inefficient, and would bog down in lack of resources and often corruption.
Less of a problem for the Imperium of Man with their million worlds and countless resources, as they could provide their relative small number of Forge Worlds with a huge stream of minerals and other resources like manpower and organic consumables. The Imperials still didn't do well, but they also had the Chartist Captains and millions of voidships to carry resources from mining or agri-worlds.
My Domain only had my Rogue Trader ships, and they weren't enough for 40 Forge Worlds. The Speranza had begun building new mass conveyors, but only Forge Machina needed about 10000 transports per month, and we could only provide less than 1000.
"The Warrant of Trade is our salvation and a shackle too. Your Dynasty needs to bulk up, and bring in more resources. Likewise, a method to increase the Forge's resource independence, perhaps finding more Space Hulks or metal asteroids?" Gemma answered in a doubtful voice.
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"Yes to both. I will help, and try to double the transport capacity in a decade. Meanwhile, I do have some metal in my pockets, which I could share with all the Forges. However, these still remain temporary solutions. The Forge model is flawed, and crippled by the low technology. I did bring the STCs for adamantium and auramite fusion, which should help by reducing metal waste by an order of magnitude when fully implemented. Ship hulls in particular, they use most of our metal, right?" I continued while holding out a stack of STC data-slates.
"Ships, starforts, consumable munitions, wet navies, railroads and bridges, then tanks and other armor. Your beloved Sentinels consume less than 0.01 percent of the metal. But fusion costs energy, and thus radioactive minerals..." Gemma noted while listing the resource costs by mass.
"My beloved Sentinels are not used and produced in the right numbers. We'll start at one million per Domain world, and possibly double that next decade. Ion Beams might be too expensive to mass-produce in such numbers, so we'll try a mix of Las-cannons and autocannons." I demanded with a level voice.
The graph shifted dramatically, as 40 billion new Sentinels at 5 tons each, already passed as third in rank. "200 billion tons of war-grade metal? Plus 40 billion weapons, or more!" Gemma yelled in outrage. It wouldn't be easy, I know.
"Changing the Sentinel's voidsteel skeleton with thinner adamantium and replacing one ton of ceramite with organic carapace armor would reduce the tonnage to only 3 tons. The combat shield will need only 2 kilograms of metal for the handles, and 200 kilos of more carapace. I was thinking to slowly phase out the Iridium-tungsten corvettes, using the iridium for the reactors and the tungsten for autocannon shells." I proposed instead and waved in the template of the IT Sentinel that Blade preferred.
The experienced Fabricator performed her own calculations. "With 800 kilograms of tungsten ammo for the autocannon, this Sentinel would reach 4 tons again. Did you stress-test the new 'carapace' armor, my Lord?" she asked with a doubtful voice.
Did I? Mostly by shooting at Tyranids with all the weapons in my arsenal, so yes. It was thoroughly tested. Billions of times at least.
But I wanted an army of power-walker infantry, not only to match the Necrons, but also to easily butcher Orks and other ground invaders. My PDF troops would outmatch Space Marines in armor and firepower, although not in training and other things. But quantity was a quality in itself, like the Tyranids proved every day.
"Don't worry about my expertise, Lady Gemma. You are my Fabricator, I need you to fabricate." I answered with a smart tone, and sat down on her couch as the sex-droid dropped her red martian robes to showcase her generous forms.
"I just want you inside me, Lord Lancefire. You will go and impregnate a million women soon, I want my share." Gemma demanded as she climbed in my lap.
I examined her body in detail, for a long time. Perfectly made, and even tasted good. I was a bit surprised when her fingers expanded into thousands of thin wires, but Gemma was an expert at fine manipulation and pleasure points stimulation. I was not disappointed.