A Rogue Trader's lifeblood is wealth. One can measure this wealth in coins or thrones, but that would miss the point.
For a Rogue Trader Dynasty is practically a mega-corp, with their own planets, ships and troops. These assets are basically the wealth of a Rogue Trader, and not money.
This was also the reason why a Rogue Trader with 200 battleships in his fleet was an enormous power in the galaxy, outmatching any Imperial Fleet and most xenos fleets. Not just the ships, but the troops and tanks inside.
The Crusade Fleet also had 100 Astartes Battleships, but only one per Chapter. Blank Primaris Marines though, so they were rather powerful even without including their advanced and upgraded arsenal which likely matched the Adeptus Custodes in armor and firepower. Not every Chapter was at full strength, or could send 10 Companies of Astartes if they were, so the total number was only 70000 of them, plus tech-marines and other support ranks.
As the Crusade Fleet grew with the Raven Guard, Deathwatch Marines and several macro-clades of Skitarii and combat servitors, we have become even more impressive, but the Rust Fields filled with Orks would have matched us in numbers easily, and 100 times over too.
Which is why most of the short operation in the Rust Fields was aimed at capturing as many Orks I could in my Tesseract, reaching 200 billion Orks, plus a lot of their vehicles and ships.
And then many more broken and destroyed ships already present in this nebula, from a dozen species as well. Then asteroids and Roks, which were simply converted asteroids.
Then it came the most the tiring task of separating Imperial stuff to one side, for later repairs. As expected, most of the Ork meks and vehicles were converted from Imperial machines, anything from cars and trucks, to locomotives, Sentinels, tanks and even Knights. I didn't care too much about cars or trucks so the Ork Auxilia could have them, but the rest I will keep for my myself.
In a single week, my wealth of ships and vehicles had tripled from this simple excursion to aid Forge Graia, without including germanium and platinum asteroids, and various samples of xeno tech which could be traded well with the Votanns or the Forge Worlds.
As we returned by Graia to pick up the Krieg regiments, I noticed a thousand Shield Sentinels being loaded on the Krieg transports, as well as millions of tungsten rounds for their autocannons.
I doubted the munition will suffice for a single day, but luckily I had my Breath to convert tungsten ingots into armor-piercing shells every time we passed close to a star.
My fleet headed towards the Morpheum Sector directly, and engaged the Promethor Hive Fleet before they could cross into the Cassidor Gulf and spread out.
The nearby Solblades fleets changed course to strike at the Hive Fleet Nautilon , leaving the sector for my larger Crusade Fleet, and with good reason as they weren't able to stop the Tyranids and just wasted ships and manpower for nothing.
Having the Ork Auxilia to deploy meant that battles were far easier than I initially planned for, and didn't even have to sacrifice the Death Korps regiments as bait for orbital strikes.
Yes, the Morpheum Sector was in ruins and a few Hive Worlds will need to be repopulated, but Terra was also eager to export their immigrants everywhere.
I also spent a million Nova Mines from my inventory thinning the Hive Fleet before we engaged it decisively, but in a single month we ended the Promethor threat for good.
Then we rushed towards the Asmodiox Sector to catch up with the Nautilon tendril, only to find a hundred barren worlds and only a few Fortress Worlds still besiged by Tyranids, while the Hive Fleet had moved on towards the Vynor Sector. Maybe I wasted too much time, helping out Graia and recruiting the Orks and Krieg Auxilia?
But destroying Promethor would have taken even longer without the Auxilia...
I sighed and calmed myself. You can't save everyone Pef! The Imperium could have mobilized and prepared hundreds of years ago, and matched the Tyranids with the same numbers of Guardsmen at least. For a polity always at war for 12000 years, the Imperium was generally quite relaxed, and many worlds didn't even have orbital forts or proper defense forces.
Canis huffed at the galactic map, and nosed my glove to deploy more Nova Mines before I landed the troops. Right! We could still save four Imperial Worlds, and then chase after Nautilon.
The Tyranid gravity drive was not so fast, after all. And all my ships had warp-less engines, ignoring their Shadow in the Warp.
The four planets received a different treatment each, Astartes for one, Skitarii and Knights on another and Auxilia and Thalax cohorts on the rest.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
While combined warfare was better, I also needed to test and train each segment of my forces independently. The Death Korps still proved the weakest, crippled as they were by the Guard's doctrine and limit on armor and equipement, so the Deus Ex Machina Titans stepped in to help.
The lone Nautiloid bio-titan crunched like a snail when a Castigator-B pattern Mega-Titan turned off the anti-grav plates on their right foot, and stepped on it.
Krigers' tanks and artillery could barely scratch the gigantic snail-like bio-titan covered in high-density carapace armor, but a small step for the Castigator was a giant step for mankind.
"Puny insects, the might of the Machine God will crush you under its feet!" yelled the Blank Princeps, Bianca 'Redhot' Lancefire as she opened up with the secondary armament to clear up the stunned Tyranids, reeling from the dead synaptic creature. The Krigers were generally not emotional, but they also cheered as the Himalaya-tall Titan stepped over them and blasted thousands of Tyranids with every shot from 300 Terrawatt Volcano Cannons.
It was not the first Titan-kill of my daughter, but it was probably the first time in history when a bio-titan larger than an Emperor-class got stepped on by anything.
The kilometer-tall greave plates housed Plasma Mortars as well, raining down plasmafire on smaller tyranid organisms barely the size of tanks. Puny insects indeed.
"Everyone, prepare to clean up and return to the ships. There will be more Nautiloid Hive Titans to crunch in the Vynor sector!" I sent on the fleet-wide vox, mostly to raise morale.
Lady Valyene smiled sweetly at me, and replayed the scene on the Singularity's main screen. "I doubted the usefulness of a battleship-scale Titan when you created the first one, but I was wrong.
With more of them, we can stomp all the xenos into the ground." she admitted in a penitent voice.
I nodded towards her large belly holding an infant daughter inside. "You just want your daughter to pilot a Castigator too."
"Is that wrong of me, husband?" she asked while batting her eyes.
"Of course not. By the way, I have collected the samples you wanted from this Hive Fleet. Take Librarian Menelau and Magos Juggler and get to work. See what weakness you can find." I answered with a smile, as I watched her Inquisitorial cape flutter as Valyene headed towards the biolab. I love to see her go.
Should I paint the Redhot Castigator in red? Maybe give it a red cape as well...I should ask Bianca first. Keep your childish impulses under control, Pef!
'A cape on a Titan will tear and snag from buildings or mountains...' the Blade AI muttered in a disappointed tone.
'Did I say something out loud?' I wondered inward.
'No, but your eyes chased the cape, and I could infer the rest. A red cape too, I would guess." the AI explained in a teasing voice.
'Capes are cool.' I defended myself with a grin. Tracking my eyes now? Damn invasive AI.
'For parades, yes. We can try a Titan cape the first parade we hold after this Crusade.' the Blade allowed as her holographic eyes sparkled.
'You think we will win?' I asked a bit uncertain. Many things could happen, and most of them bad or worse. This was 40k after all. Good things never happened.
'Have you ever lost, Pef Lancefire?' the Blade asked in a serious voice.
'Kinda. Well, not really. I fumbled my way into phyrric victories a few times.' I admitted with a frown. Like burning Sotha with an Atmospheric Incinerator. Pretty much the definition of a phyrric victory, that one.
'Indeed. Remember, I travelled to end of time and there was only Chaos and ruin. But in that timeline you were not there, Lord Captain. Cadia had fallen and the galaxy was torn in two, as the Eye of Terror broke through. But Slaanesh is dead now.' the time-travelling AI said in a mild, reminescing voice.
'So there wasn't a Star Child emerging from the Astronomican?' I asked a bit curious.
'No. The Golden Throne failed and all Space Marines died. Chaos Marines too. Then it got much worse.' The Blade spoke in a halting tone, almost in pain.
'Hmmm. The Terminus Decree . Some kind of galactic wide spell or gene-seed plague. It can still happen.' I muttered with concern.
I mean, if I could think of programmed cell-death so could any smart enough genetor.
'See? The future is not written in stone, Lord Captain. We can change it. It has changed already.' the Blade whispered in a hopeful voice.
Hope, huh? The last virus left after opening Pandora's Box. We were going to be eaten by Tyranids for certain.